By John McGuinness TD
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The state has failed Grace twice. Firstly, is allowing her, a nonverbal, intellectually disabled, to be effectively abandoned, while being serially abused over years. Now she has been failed again by a failure to hold to account the organisations and people responsible.
It is said that sunlight is the best disinfectant. In Ireland, it is a form or whitewash, where the use of process, of inquiry and above all of time, allow facts to fade beyond the point of accountability. Inquiry should be for the purpose of uncovering. Here it has ended in obfuscation, meaning to make unclear and obscure.
It is imperative that the Dáil debate the report of the Farrelly Commission into the Grace case. But this can only be a prelude. The Oireachtas cannot sit in judgment on people, but it must hold public bodies to account. Public bodies who, over years, obscured, made unclear and then abused the critical resource of time, can and must be held to account for their administrative actions.
Much criticism is being made of the Farrelly Commission. The deeper failure, the real scandal, is that had public bodies acted in the public interest, saw the truth as an imperative purpose for themselves, the Commission would have been unnecessary. Instead, they changed sunlight into whitewash. The losers are the truth, and Grace who is failed again.
I chaired the Public Accounts Committee where this was first discussed. I watched as former TD John Deasy tried in vain to get to the truth and establish the facts. I listened carefully to the whistleblowers that gave evidence in private session to the PAC. I was horrified and sickened by what I learned happened to Grace and others.
That a young nonverbal intellectually disabled woman could be treated like this while in the care of the State is truly shocking. Let no one convince you otherwise, Grace was sexually abused on numerous occasions and in a violent manner to the extent that to this day she carries the scars.
When is inserting implements into a woman’s anus without consent not anal rape? When is withholding social welfare payments meant for the betterment of the recipient not financial abuse? Would black eyes, bruised thighs, bruised breasts not suggest at even a casual glance that something untoward had happened? She was unwashed, poorly dressed, obviously not getting basic care and no one noticed.
I expected that this final report would set out in plain language the background to the care of Grace, where it failed and why, who was responsible for what happened to Grace and the names of those who clearly failed to protect Grace while she was in the care of the State. I expected the basic rights of Grace to be vindicated.
The cost of the commission to date is approximately €37M. The combined cost of other reports into the care of Grace are approximately €750,000. The court awarded Grace €6.3m approximately and instructed the HSE to pay the agency that had a role in caring for Grace in her later years of care the sum of €600,000 in respect of grants due to it that had been withheld or reduced allegedly as a sanction for staff speaking out on the case. Further court awards were made to settle a case brought by a whistleblower.
The full cost to the State for this case is not known as all concerned signed a confidentiality agreement. The legal costs incurred by the HSE have not been published in full.
The real costs are of the truth, which was not established, and justice which remains undone.
* John McGuinness is a Fianna Fáil TD for Carlow/Kilkenny and has served as Leas-Cheann Comhairle of the 34th Dáil since February 2025
