State probe is the least we can do for these victims

The woman known as Grace and 46 other intellectually disabled boys, girls, men, and women who went through a Waterford foster home have been denied justice for far too long.

As readers of this newspaper will know, Grace was the young woman who was left to languish in the foster home for over 14 years until July 2009, despite repeated claims of sexual abuse emanating from the home.

Exposed to some of the most horrific sexual and physical abuse, as well as savage rape, Grace and a number of those who stayed at the foster home up until 2013 suffered a double injustice at the hands of key institutions of a State which failed them abjectly.

These are the central allegations which will now form the basis of a State commission of inquiry.

A long-overdue publishing of the report by senior counsel Conor Dignam lays out a detailed list of questions for that inquiry. The report sheds light as to how this appalling situation was allowed to happen.

In his 309-page report, Dignam has done a fine job of identifying the main issues not just relating to how Grace and the others were exposed to such maltreatment but also how the path to justice has been frustrated. The report finds that:

Two still unpublished HSE- commissioned reports into the controversy, by Resilience Ireland and Conal Devine, “did not meet [the HSE’s] own stated procurement rules” and “were not adequate to ensure the independence of those carrying out the review”;

While the “approach adopted” by the Resilience Ireland review was “appropriate and adequate”, the terms of reference given to Devine and associates by the HSE “give rise to specific issues of concern”. Specifically, Dignam concludes they were “inadequate in all circumstances” and meant “serious issues were not investigated as soon as possible”;

These “serious issues” include “allegations of a cover-up, the alleged danger of a deliberate destruction of files, allegations the decisions were made by the HSE in the best interest of the HSE and not the service user”, and “an alleged threat to the funding of a service provider”. This service provider is understood to be the whistleblower who raised the foster abuse concerns;

Further inadequacies in the HSE investigations meant the families of 40 other vulnerable children and teenagers placed with the foster family at the centre of the abuse claims saw any examination of their own cases delayed by “almost four years”;

While the HSE’s general policy to not publish any investigations when gardaí advise doing so may impact on a criminal investigation has “merit”, no “exploration” of the garda opinion took place. Dignam concludes that publishing the long-delayed HSE reports is unlikely to “fatally interfere with a fair trial” and that there is “no civil law bar to publication”.

For almost two years, TDs John McGuinness and John Deasy used the platform of the Oireachtas public accounts committee to try and highlight the horrors of this case.

From a read of his recommendations, Dignam has discounted nothing of what Deasy or McGuinness raised when no one was listening.

Nor has Dignam ruled out any of the substantive claims made by the whistleblowers who have risked their careers to speak out about what went on in the foster home.

From here, Finian McGrath, the disabilities minister, has given the HSE two weeks to issue its response to the Dignam report.

Then it will be up to McGrath to bring finalised terms of reference to Cabinet for approval before the Oireachtas votes on the establishment of the inquiry.

Overall, what we have in the Dignam report is a litany of incompetence and shoddy management.

The cost of such failures has meant years of heartache and pain for the victims of the abuse and those who have spoken out on their behalf.

A commission of inquiry is the very least these people deserve.

Those who were in charge when these horrific acts happened must examine their consciences for allowing such appalling events to take place at all.