Despite his insistence, Tony O’Brien is defending the indefensible

Not informing a family that they were placing a vulnerable relative with people accused of the most horrific abuse is absurd and, in PAC members’ views, negligent, writes Fiachra Ó Cionnaith

Throughout yesterday’s five-hour emergency Dáil Public Accounts Committee meeting, HSE director general Tony O’Brien repeatedly insisted that he was not trying to defend the indefensible.

However, given his need to hold the party line and the severe legal constraints he is apparently working under, he instead did something almost as bad — he continually attempted to justify the decisions taken by officials throughout the decades-long foster care abuse case.

However, while Mr O’Brien’s position does not quite entail defending what happened — more outlining the practical reasons for why — when the outcome of stonewalling on vital information central to the case remains the same, is there really a difference?

Asked about the failure to ensure all placements ended in 1995 when serious allegations of sexual, physical, and financial abuse were first confirmed, Mr O’Brien said regretfully that non-state placements were not in the then South Eastern Health Board’s powers.

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Not naming which managers were responsible for leaving ‘Grace’ in the home in 1996 — after a three-person panel overruled two initial decisions to remove her immediately — or explaining the reasons for why this happened is because releasing any information would be unfair on those same officials who have not had a chance to respond to internal reports outlining the situation.

These same reports — the 2012 Conal Devine report, and the 2015 Resilience Ireland investigation — can equally not be published because releasing the records would jeopardise any potential court cases, a position the HSE has held, and in some people’s minds hidden behind, for over 12 months.

The decision two decades after the claims first emerged not to inform the parents of ‘Anne’, a woman with significant intellectual disabilities who they had placed privately with the family between 1992 and October 2013, that the unspecified “concerns” over the home their child was in involved sexual abuse was equally not in their remit.

And the claimed apology which the HSE last month said was given to Grace in December before having to admit at the weekend it never happened? That, apparently, was nothing to do with a lodged civil case and did not have “malign intent”.

It was simply a misunderstanding, after nine months of preparing the “special” apology.

In one sense Mr O’Brien is correct on every point, legally if not morally. But, as Labour TD and PAC member Joe Costello said yesterday, it doesn’t wash.

If a child or vulnerable adult is at potential risk of abuse, a State body has an obligation to act if it is aware of the situation.

Not informing a family that they were placing a vulnerable relative with people accused of the most horrific abuse and saying they could only be told of unspecified concerns is absurd and, in PAC members’ views, negligent.

And the claimed apology? Well, what does that look like to you?

Mr O’Brien yesterday insisted he is not defending the indefensible.

But until common sense takes control of the HSE’s approach to this scandal, he is effectively doing just that.

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