Abuse of Louise is a lesson for the arrogant Department of Education

THE Department of Education is an extraordinary place. In the various bits of bumph it publishes from time to time — annual reports, statements of strategy, and the like — it sets out its mission as "enabling learners to achieve their full potential and contribute to Ireland’s economic, social, and cultural development".

It’s hard to conceive of anything more bland. If you go back to 2005, when it first produced a strategy statement, its mission was to provide “for high-quality education, which would enable individuals to achieve their full potential…” and which would contribute to Ireland’s development. Back then, the department saw a role for the system in contributing to Ireland’s growth and change. Now, that’s all collapsed into a bland and meaningless statement of what “learners” can do for the country.

“So what?” you may be wondering. These are only words, after all. But of all government departments, you’d expect the Department of Education to choose its words with care. And, boy, does it ever. That’s one of the reasons I emphasised the word “for” in its earlier, slightly more elaborate definition of its mission. In most jurisdictions, the role of the education department is to educate, pure and simple. In Ireland, the department has never done more than provide “for” education.

That means the department is responsible for policy and resources, in the broadest terms. It has no responsibility whatever, in its own view, for the actual interaction between the system and the student. In part, that derives from the rather peculiar view of education in the Constitution. Bunreacht na hÉireann recognises the family, rather than the State, as the primary educator. But it does say that, in the interests of the common good, the State requires each child to have a minimum education, and, for that reason, it also says the State will provide for free primary education.

But the State has used that distinction — between having a duty to educate its citizens and providing for the education of its citizens — to its own advantage in all sorts of ways. And it has used the distinction as often as it needs to, against the interests of its citizens.

For example, the Department of Education fought endless legal battles to prevent itself from being responsibile for the education of people with an intellectual disability. They often settled those cases on the steps of the court, but only after putting parents through years of legal torture. But, sometimes, it fought them right through — and then argued that because it only had a responsibility to provide “for” an education system, it had no responsibility to ensure that every citizen had access to that system.

But if the department was cheese-paring and mean-spirited regarding people with an intellectual disability, it was cruel in dealing with survivors of abuse in the system.

Louise O’Keeffe is the most famous of those survivors, because she refused to go away. I’ve never met her, although I’ve written here about her before. For all I know, I mightn’t agree with her about the time of day, but she is still one of those rare people who deserve to be recognised as a leading citizen, someone who has helped to shape the best concept of citizenship.

We all know the basic facts by now — or we should. Louise was sexually abused, along with many other children, by her principal, Leo Hickey, in a small national school outside Kinsale. Hickey was a public servant in every possible way: Salary, terms and conditions of employment, pension all set by the Department of Education. The only respect in which he wasn’t a public servant — and this applies to all teachers and school principals — is that he wasn’t recruited directly by the Department, but (in his case) by the local school manager, who happened to be the bishop.

Louise sued, and the department fought back, using the technicality of who had hired Hickey to great effect. When it beat Louise in the Irish High Court and Supreme Court, it pursued her for legal costs.

And then it wrote to other survivors, telling them what it had done to Louise, and warning them that if they took legal action they, too, would be pursued for costs. That’s how you enable people to learn.

Except Louise refused to learn, and, instead, fought on, determined to establish that the State of which she was a citizen had an obligation to protect children like her from abuse in education.

And, earlier this year, the European Court of Human Rights agreed with her, finally obliging the Irish State to live up to its responsibilities.

Well, sort of. When the court announced its judgement, the department issued a press release, noting, in a particularly weaselly fashion, that “the abuse to which Louise O’Keeffe, and many others, were subjected to in our recent past is a source of national shame and it has taught us lessons that we, as a country, must never forget”. No apology, no reference to the way it had fought her. Just a technical recitation of the facts. It was a statement written through what the Taoiseach once described as “the gimlet eye” of a lawyer.

But the department was also given six months by the European Court to set out an “action plan” of what it was going to do in response to the court’s original judgement, and that “plan” was published in the last few days.

I’d be fascinated to know if either the outgoing or the new education minister was taken through this “plan” by the civil servants or by the lawyers responsible for it.

It wouldn’t take long, because there is nothing in it. The first thing I was expecting to find was some expression of regret, apology, or remorse that any child would, or could, be abused on the department’s watch. Nothing of the sort. The second thing I would have been looking for was an absolute assertion that the department accepted full responsibility for the protection of children in its care. Again, nothing of the sort.

The Catholic Church has established — not without difficulty — a powerful and independent child safeguarding system to ensure that the highest standards of child protection are monitored and enforced.

That’s the sort of thing you’d find in an action plan that was genuinely concerned about rooting out child abuse. But, again, nothing of the sort.

Instead, the Department of Education’s action plan is just waffle —a recitation of measures other departments have taken to enhance child protection in Ireland, but nothing specific that the Department of Education is determined to do. Louise has made the reasonable point that they didn’t appear to have consulted survivors of abuse in drawing up their so-called plan. To me, it seems they consulted nothing except their own hide-bound attitudes and legal interests. Hopefully, when the European Court reads this meaningless “action plan” they’ll force the department to think again.

It thoroughly deserves the embarrassment.