Posted by Dr. Eoin Lenihan (@EoinLenihan) posted at 2:21 pm on Fri, Oct 18, 2024:
This is a national scandal!
200 children have died in state care in Ireland in the past decade. 11 of them were murdered. 38 died from drug overdoses. Sex abuse of children happening ‘on a serious scale’.
Tusla is not fit for purpose. Ministers need to be investigated.
https://x.com/EoinLenihan/status/1847266798191747204?t=UCjCXJlMshvsk9xM4roUMQ&s=03
NIAMH UÍ BHRIAIN: A 14-year old girl abducted from Tusla care was found in a brothel. Peadar Tóibín’s searing critique should shame the government into action regarding child abuse taking place on their watch. They cannot pretend that they did not know.
Peadar Tóibín’s searing critique should shame Govt into action on child abuse
This, as the Dáil gathered to (deservedly) lambaste Sinn Féin for the series of scandals, Peadar Tóibín of Aontú made a powerful, impassioned, and vitally important speech in the chamber regarding the State’s horrifying failures to protect children in care – and he wasn’t talking about historical cases.
If you haven’t seen his speech then you should take a moment to watch it now, to understand the sheer breadth of the failures of the State, its equally horrifying indifference to that failure, and the sometimes inexplicable actions of those who should be taking responsibility for the children who are dying, being trafficked, being abused, and even being murdered, whilst in care.
Tóibín began by saying that it was “shocking” that politicians were only having a debate on the issue of child protection in the Chamber “when it is politically charged,” adding that “there is significant hypocrisy bouncing off the chairs of this Chamber today.”
He’s correct in that. As Tóibín acknowledged, the scandals emerging from Sinn Féin are obviously newsworthy and deserving of discussion, but he said it made him “sick to my very stomach that we only get a debate on child protection when it is in the context of the political events that have happened in the past two weeks. I have looked around the Chamber at the Government benches and have seen people who have not been here for weeks. I see them chomping at the political bit.”
That accusation from Tóibín was backed up by an almost unbelievable litany of failures by the state in terms of child protection – and it is telling that the most frequent voices heard (by this writer at least) on this appalling dereliction of duty by the government are those of Independents or small parties like Aontú.
(Offaly Independent Carol Nolan, for example, is making repeated efforts to force the Minister for Children, Roderic O’Gorman, to bring a deeply disturbing report from UCD on the rape and sexual exploitation of girls in care – sometimes by gangs of man – to the Minister for Justice for action. Independent TD Mattie McGrath also said that many of the statements in the Dáil on Wednesday represented “brinkmanship and showmanship from the Government trying to get one over on Sinn Féin” at a time when children in State care have gone missing and been failed by Tusla and by the Government.)
Peadar Tóibín said that despite tweets from MEPs and press statements from Ministers on the current controversy, “people should not be fooled into thinking this Government is concerned for the well-being of children around this country”.
He was frustrated, he said, because over the course of the last five years, he had raised the issue of child protection in the House, only to be “stonewalled” by Ministers.
He said that by asking parliamentary questions Aontú had discovered that nearly 200 children who were either in State care or known to the State have died in the past decade.
“Of this number, 38 died by taking their own lives, while more died from drug overdoses. Eleven of those deaths were murders, which means that 5% of all of the children who died in State care or who were known to State care services were murdered.
That is an incredible figure, as I am sure the Minister of State will agree.”
Eleven of the deaths were murders. Eleven children were murdered in state care. It’s like something you think only happens in a narco state. In addition, 70 unaccompanied minors had gone missing from Tusla since 2017, Tóibín said, adding that a number of those children, some of whom had come to this country without parents or guardians and who were known to Tusla, have been left homeless in Dublin for weeks.
“Tusla has been unable to tell me how many children each year are being physically or sexually abused in State care, saying that the data requested is “not centrally collated” by Tusla. The agency is not even collecting the information in relation to abuse that children may suffer in State care,” he said.
What he said next should have chilled everyone in the chamber to the marrow:
“A 14-year old girl was abducted by a criminal gang within minutes of being placed with Tusla. She was found in a brothel a year later.
I would ask the Government, on a day when it is trying to occupy the high moral ground and trying to politically sink the knife into the Opposition, to look at itself and at the hundreds of people who are significantly damaged by the fact that it will not act.
This is happening to a group of children because they have no power. They are from poor backgrounds and have nobody with wealth or influence to speak on their behalf. That is why this issue is so much under the table and does not receive priority for discussion in this Chamber. Unfortunately, it is also one of the reasons it is not being fixed. If the Government is real about today, then it must be real about these children too.”
He is absolutely right. No-one cares because these children are poor and without influence. They are not important to those who value vote-getting and power-grabbing. Just as with the women who are told they must endure being locked up with violent, homicidal men and rapists, their numbers are too few, their voices too marginalised for them to matter to people who, above all else, crave political power.
Additionally, in my opinion, a deeply harmful desire not to rock the boat in relation to immigration and other issues may also be at play here, just as happened in other jurisdictions such as Rotherham in relation to sexual exploitation of young girls by grooming gangs, an issue specifically raised in the UCD report.
Tóibín also talked about the sexual exploitation and trafficking involving children in care which he said was happening in Ireland at present “on a serious scale” – and a key issue, he said, was that “special emergency accommodation arrangements, which consist of unregulated accommodation in this State, mostly by third-party providers in rented accommodation, are being used by Tusla to accommodate children in State care.”
He then raised an issue which, if the establishment media was doing its job properly, should have led to an insistence that the Minister involved be made to answer serious questions.
“We had a courageous judge, Judge Dermot Simms, who raised his head above the parapet. He wrote a damning letter and gave three reports to the Minister, Deputy O’Gorman. Shockingly, the Minister has confirmed to Aontú that he shredded those reports on the basis of GDPR.
“Three reports that outlined the horrendous experience of children in State care in this country were written by a judge and given to a Minister. The judge got permission to put the information into those reports from the people concerned and he redacted their names but the Minister for children felt more responsibility for GDPR rules than he did for the protection of those children. That is an absolutely damning indictment of the actions of this Government.”
How was this permitted to happen? Why wasn’t Roderic O’Gorman and the entire Cabinet called to account for this deplorable outcome? How can this entire government simply decide they are not accountable for anything anymore?
Why isn’t a fraction of the hundred of millions of euro heaped on RTÉ used to fund not one but several Prime Time investigations into the horror-show described by Peadar Tóibín, instead of wasting taxpayer monies on hysterical nonsense about the ‘far-right’?
Peadar Tóibín’s searing critique should shame the government into action regarding child abuse taking place on their watch. Too often, children in care are not actually being cared for. Those who wield the political power to actually stop the horror of what’s happening to these most vulnerable children can continue to look away, but they will not be able to pretend that they did not know.
Who Watches the Watchers? 