We owe it to all children at risk to publish the Fitzgerald inquiry report

THERE is a silence at the heart of the kelly Fitzgerald case which speaks louder than many words that have sought to justify the decision not to publish the report into the handling of her case. That silence arises from the fact that she is no longer alive to speak in the debate about her tragic life.

Saying this goes beyond trying to make a cheap emotive point about a dead child and those who had contact with her. The significance of the tragic outcome of the case can be measured by the new and profound impact that survivors of child abuse have had on public awareness and in child protection in recent years.

The survivors of abuse and organisational failure sin the Goldenbridge, Brendan Smyth, Kilkenny and other cases been crucial in breaking through the organisational closed ranks and silence that has traditionally dogged this area, bringing about public accountability for the circumstances surrounding failures in their care and protection.

Before the 1990s, the clamp on public accountability was such that governments managed to ride out child abuse controversies in which professional practice was questioned. Before the Kilkenny case, a single small scale examination of professional practice in child abuse cases that ended in death was undertaken in 1982 by the then Minister for Health, Dr Michael Woods.

In a statement that ran to all of four pages, he was mildly critical of the professionals involved for not co ordinating their work better, but placed particular emphasis on the constitutional limitations on intervention and the "strong tradition of family life in this country and keeping families together".

Publication of the Kilkenny report in 1993 reframed the State's perception of its limited role in preventing serious child abuse. I strongly suspect officialdom would have ridden out that controversy too but for the pressure for an inquiry that became insurmountable when the 27 year old victim, "Mary", appeared on RTE television and was critical of the response of the health services to her case - some of which was borne out by the inquiry.

THE Kilkenny report managed to shatter a stultifying lack of political interest and critical reflection on the childcare system. While professionals at the front line did their best, there were no real anchor points around which to focus learning, change and debate. Child abuse inquiries are powerfully symbolic dramas which help to provide just such a focus.

The refusal to publish the Fitzgerald report is the latest manifestation of how officialdom now seems to be engaged in a defensive strategy to close off that space of learning, accountability and critical reflection. An increasing sense of organisational closure by the State has been emerging (exemplified by the debacle of the suppressed Madonna House report) as the range of disclosures of survivors coming forward has increased pressures on State and church to account for their actions.

So far as the authorities are concerned, these courageous people have become the loose cannons, so to speak, in the childcare and protection system. Those in power - politicians, administrators, church officials - can decide that what is known about their cases should not be made available to the public; that the file should be kept closed. But they have no way of silencing those survivors who want explanations and justice.

Hence the uneasy, dangerous silence that arises in tragic cases like Kelly Fitzgerald's, when there is no survivor. We have been told only that the report will not be published because of the threat of legal action from some health board staff. But so what? If that be the case, why not publish and take the risk of being damned? And, if sued, who is to say that the health hoard would not win? In any case, whatever a health board stands to lose in a legal action, the financial loss and embarrassment can still be offset by the potential gains to the public interest in the report being published.

Remarkably, though, what winning and losing and the threat of legal action is actually about in this case is most unclear. Mismanagement of the report and lack of clarity has already resulted in misinformation and the damaging of those Western Health Board personnel described in leaks as "naive and ineffective". The meaning of such remarks will remain utterly distorted unless a full account of the circumstances and arguments which led to such conclusions is made available through publication of the report.

Child abuse inquiries, and the resulting media interest, carry enormous risks for professionals. In the UK, for instance, careers have been ruined by them. No doubt, the Fitzgerald case has touched these raw professional nerves, and it is vital that such matters are handled with extreme care. Crucially, as I understand it, no individual professional is actually named in the Fitzgerald report, and it is the health board's child protection system that is subjected to criticism and recommendations for change.

ALSO (though less obviously) damaged are those individuals who, in good faith, need to conduct the inquiry on behalf of the health board. Official statements and other commentary have linked the "threat of legal action" to how the inquiry was conducted and the supposed approach and conclusions drawn by the investigating team.

Such innuendo implies that there some way of producing such reports which will not result in conflict. It can be argued, in fact, that the painful issues that these inquiries must confront are such that an investigating team would not have done its job correctly if their conclusions did not result in differences of opinion about events and interpretations.

A refusal to acknowledge such complexities only marginalises those who have taken on a responsibility for public disclosure of the circumstances of cases. Who would agree in future to have any involvement with an investigating team if this is the kind of treatment one can expect? But this is how the dynamics of organisational and system closure operate. These are symbolic struggles around who has power - to speak, and to insist on silence - in which norms and standards are established for future practice.

The Fitzgerald case appeared to boil down to a classic inquiry involving a labour relations problem and a public relations/accountability problem for both the health board and the Department of Health. Publication of the report in full is essential to the prevention of (further) organisational closing of ranks and the development of healthy systems for the protection of children at risk - especially those who, like Kelly Fitzgerald, are entirely dependent on us to break the silence.