RTÉ report on care abuses: Enough talk, it’s time to take action

There are few events in anyone’s life as demanding emotionally, as unnerving and undermining, as the decision faced by the parents and siblings of a child with intellectual disabilities when they realise they can no longer care for their child in their home. Commitment and unquestioning love are defeated by the hard realities of day-to-day life.

A weak and vulnerable person, usually a child, their own flesh and blood, must be entrusted to the kindness of complete strangers and be placed in full-time care, sometimes a long way from the family home.

Thankfully few of us will ever face such a difficult decision, one that requires a degree of trust in our fellow man and our health services that is often hard to justify, much less sustain.

That awful burden does not ease with the passing of the years, but rather becomes a tyranny of old age, one that gnaws at what should be the peace of autumn.

Every parent of a child-turned-adult in care wonders, endlessly tossing and turning in their bed, what will become of their child after they are gone.

Who will look after them and make sure that they are at least comfortable?

It is a question that is hardly ever answered with the assurance that assuages the unjustified sense of guilt and helplessness felt by the ageing parents of a person dependent on full-time residential care.

Last night’s RTÉ programme that uncovered shocking, bestial mistreatment of adults with intellectual difficulties cut to the bone and will unnerve every parent or sibling of any person reliant on the mercies of the staff in a care home.

It is pointless to point out that the great majority working in those institutions are decent, caring people who could not behave in the way reported by RTÉ.

The fact that they might, in the absence of supervision as happened at Áras Attracta, abuse a vulnerable person is enough to end the prospect of a peaceful night’s sleep for months to come.

This is not the first time we have been at this point and whatever preventative measures we adopted before have failed.

The HSE has established two investigations and nine staff at the home have been suspended.

If these allegations are substantiated, and everyone involved is innocent until proven otherwise, then a course of action far beyond anything contemplated before is required.

If there is a suspicion of assault then the matter must be taken out of the hands of the HSE and dealt with by the gardaí and, if needs be, the courts.

The managers, at local and regional level, who were supposed to supervise the bungalow where the abuse is supposed to have taken place must be removed permanently from the system — and that does not mean the usual public sector swizz of being suspended on full pay.

There must be profound consequences for those involved in this outrage.

If this does not happen how can anyone have faith in our system?

If this does not happen how can any parent or sibling of any person in a similar care environment even sleep at night?

We’ve had enough talk around these issues, it’s time for those who know right from wrong to have the courage and determination to root out this evil cancer.

Enough well-meaning talk.