AS I SEE IT
BY MARIANNE HERON
We have an epidemic of gender-based violence, with horrifying reports of violence, coercive control, rape and murder almost on a daily basis. We have an ongoing housing crisis, where the Government seems incapable of providing affordable homes for a generation that are priced out the market.
But what about broken promises to children that plague the news headlines with equally dismaying regularity?
The 2015 Children’s Act undertook to put children first but given the litany of failure it seems thousands of them, especially the most vulnerable, are being put last. In 1992 Ireland became a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) which endorses the right of children to enjoy the highest standard of physical and mental health. Too many, who have been failed by the State, are not able to enjoy that right.
In the last month a number of different stories illustrate just how low down the list of priorities children are. Parents of children with special needs staged a sleep in outside the Dail in protest at the lack of school places for their children – one mother involved had applied to no fewer than 15 schools.
The scandal where three children were treated like guinea pigs with the use of unauthorised springs for their scoliosis surgery has been condemned by the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQUA). The Authority’s report found that failures in controls by the by Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) “meant that children were not protected from harm”.
In addition, scores of children face still face treatment barriers, with long, painful waits for surgery for scoliosis, despite a commitment by the Government following the Children’s Ombudsman’s 2017 report drawing attention to the issue. There is the further scandal of the unnecessary hip operations carried out over a two- year period at Cappagh and Temple Street hospitals.
Even measures meant to benefit children can backfire. The hot school meals programme for primary schools was found to be offering the very foods high in salt sugar and fat that should be avoided for health reasons.
Guidelines to safeguard children from restraint and exclusion at school have been the subject of complaint to a top official UN official on torture and degrading treatment.
To add to all these concerns there is the plight of over 4,000 homeless children and the hundreds of children waiting for years for essential therapies for conditions like autism and ADHD and the failure to majority of the Mother & Baby Homes to contribute to the redress scheme to support survivors.
Most shocking of all are the numbers of children who die or are abused while under the watch of Tusla/ the Child and Family Agency, the very organisation set up in 2014 to protect children. In the last three years 53 have died, a situation highlighted by the fate of Kyran Durdin who was on Tusla’s radar but whose disappearance was not reported for two years. Disturbingly, UCD’s Sexual Exploitation Research Programme (SERP) report found that children, mainly girls, were being abused and sometimes raped by men while under Tusla’s watch.
All of the above suggest that action on behalf of children is urgently needed to address the systemic failures, lack of oversight and accountability, poor record keeping and lack of co-ordination between different agencies and department bedevilling the situation.
Minister Norma Foley now has overall responsibility for Children having taken over from Roderick O’Gorman, whose track record in handling his responsibility for International Protection Applicants hardly inspires confidence. Other departments involved include Education, Health and Justice.
Minors do have a champion in the Ombudsman for Children, (OCO). Since the office opened in 2004 the number of complaints have grown every year from760 in 2006 to 1,790 in 2023. The biggest proportion of complaints concern education, health, housing and child protection. But, while the Ombudsman can issue reports and draw the Government’s attention to problems. the office doesn’t have the kick ass function to go in and sort things out.
Maybe we should copy Minister for Housing James Browne’s excellent idea for a troubleshooter or tsar (unfortunate word) to sort out the logjams holding up progress with housing, from water, to electricity to infrastructure.
Children need more than one individual to fight their cause, a sheriff with a posse perhaps or a wizard with an army of elves.
