Every so often, we are provided with a revealing snapshot of how much we as a society care about our most vulnerable citizens. On the basis of two important events during the past week, we should hang our heads in shame, writes Mary Raftery.
Both reveal a callous disregard for groups of children whose needs are desperate. The first is the report by the Children's Ombudsman to the Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children. This summarised in alarming terms 61 complaints made to her office in respect of the abuse being suffered by a total of 94 children.
Most disturbing was Emily Logan's finding that many of the children were left without support in abusive situations, sometimes for months, after they revealed their abuse, feeling "betrayed" and in fear as a result of "having told".
Great difficulty was experienced in getting anyone at the HSE to listen to the complaints, and further problems arose in terms of the provision of supports and services. A grim picture emerged of children having had the enormous courage finally to tell someone they were being abused, and then being left hanging out to dry.
Emily Logan also found significant regional differences in how complaints were responded to. In other words, if you are an abused child, the help you get will depend at least in part on where you live.
This finding is supported by the most recent figures on child abuse available from the Department of Health and Children. Produced late last year as a mass of tables and figures, with little or no explanation or interpretation, it is still possible to discern some patterns.
Most shocking is the number of cases where no finding has been made as to whether abuse has occurred - presumably meaning that in most of these cases, no action is being taken. Out of the 6,336 cases of abuse reported nationwide in 2003, just under 50 per cent had yet to receive an assessment by the end of that year.
One of the worst areas was the old Southern Health Board, with over two-thirds of its 666 cases still awaiting assessment. By contrast, the South Eastern Health Board was able to conclude assessments on all but 43 of its 540 cases.
When you consider that behind these dry statistics are large numbers of children living in terror and in danger of further abuse as a direct result of having told, the situation is clearly a devastating indictment of all the complacent rhetoric about how seriously everyone takes the issue of child abuse.
The second group of children betrayed this week are the tens of thousands who fall ill and end up in Temple Street hospital. For the past two decades, conditions at this facility have been so appalling that there has not even been an attempt to defend them.
A warren of narrow corridors and tiny rooms, in a cobbled-together amalgam of three ancient and crumbling buildings, Temple Street has long been recognised as being wildly unsuited to the provision of proper paediatric care.
Beds crammed together and parents having to sleep on the floor to remain with their children are just some of the daily realities of life in Temple Street, where staff battle heroically against enormous obstacles to care for their small charges.
It would now appear that plans to replace the hospital with a brand new building adjacent to the Mater hospital have been shelved, in an act of "sabotage", according to a group of Temple Street's most senior doctors.
For the past 20 years, numerous plans to remedy the shambles of Temple Street have been announced in a brief flare of publicity and then subsequently quietly dropped. All of these proposals received a hearty welcome from the area's most famous TD, Bertie Ahern, a cabinet minister for much of that period.
This has had the peculiar effect of leading people to believe that the disgraceful mess that was (and is) Temple Street hospital was about to be sorted, that there was no real need for concerted protest. Bertie Ahern's constant endorsements of the need for huge investment in the children's hospital have paradoxically served both the hospital and the children of Dublin's northside poorly.
Few would doubt that when it comes to Temple Street the Taoiseach's heart has always been in the right place. The problem is rather the vast distance between his money and his mouth on the issue.
Even as recently as last October, Mr Ahern was stating categorically that there were "no difficulties" with the plans to relocate to the Mater hospital site and that the project "to build a proper children's hospital" there would begin without delay.
He made clear that this was regardless of any proposed national reviews of paediatric care provision in the country.
Now, with the plans on hold and more outside consultancy firms called in, the Taoiseach has been made to look like either a fool or a liar.
It seems that if you're a child in Ireland, and you are abused or ill, you have become a particular target for empty promises and hollow platitudes.
Of course everyone feels your pain. Just don't ask us to do anything about it.