Child protection system condemned

Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald has condemned what she called the “shambolic child protection system” of the previous government.

Every year there are 30,000 children protection cases of which 1,500 children are the victims of sexual, physical or emotional abuse, Ms Fitzgerald said, adding: “This means that in recent years thousands more children have been neglected, assaulted, raped and humiliated".

Calling for increased awareness of the harm done to children by abuse and neglect, the Minister said that “in many past instances of abuse, people knew but did nothing. “This is a cycle of silence that we must break in this country, and it will require a totally new approach to child protection.”

She said Irish society needed to be aware of what was happening in cities, towns, communities and within families around the country.

Warning there would be “no more standing idly by” and no more “I won’t bother reporting it”, Ms Fitzgerald said breaking the “national cycle of silence” required legislation on child protection that was pending, a reformed system of State care and intervention, and the amendment of the Constitution to strengthen child protection.

She was speaking on the opening night of the Fine Gael ardfheis, taking place at the National Convention Centre in Dublin. The Minister said the

Oireachtas committee on health and children will consider the heads or initial elements of the Children First Bill after Easter. This legislation was first promised in 1998 by Fianna Fáil. She pledged to have it in place by the end of the year.

The Minister also said about 1,600 children were in long-term fostering but could not be adopted by their foster parents because their parents were married. She said the State discriminated against children “based on whether their parents wear wedding rings or not”.

Fixing the problems in child protection “is going to take a long time”, but there were dedicated, hardworking and committed people working across the sector. “Rarely do you find a sector with such a mismatch between the dedication of its people and the incoherence of the system in which they had to operate,” Ms Fitzgerald said.

The Minister is awaiting the advice of the Attorney General before publishing the report into the deaths of children in care.

The report was “harrowing and upsetting” and “would show how abuse and neglect in the early years of a child’s life can be the beginning of a journey which is bleak and troubled and short”.