The Minister for Health and Children is to meet the Eastern Regional Health Authority to find out why a 16-year-old girl who was tortured, raped and mutilated by her father was left without adequate residential care for a number of months.
Mr Martin told The Irish Times last night he was "very upset" on hearing of the girl's circumstances "because this girl has gone through too much already".
Meanwhile the Northern Area Health Board - one of the three boards in the ERHA region - denied categorically that it had neglected the girl.
It said that counselling services and "a number of long-term residential accommodation arrangements" had been made available but that these had broken down earlier this year.
Father Peter McVerry, who highlighted the case this week, said the girl, her siblings and mother should have been placed in suitable, therapeutic accommodation together but such accommodation did not exist.
The NAHB said yesterday it had found suitable accommodation for the girl and was "in the process of securing the staff and other supports required".
It said it had been, and continued, to work closely with the family members in its area.
It said the placement of some children "can be difficult due to their individual circumstances".
Mr Martin said, however, that there could be difficulties in dealing with particular cases "but I think the system has to be robust enough and flexible enough to cater for the most severe cases. In my opinion we have to learn lessons very, very quickly from this case."
Responding to Father McVerry's call for an independent authority for homeless children, the Minister said this had been proposed by the Forum on Youth Homelessness and the Government was considering it.
The Minister of State for Children, Ms Mary Hanafin, said she was "appalled" by the girl's situation.
There had been a "systems failure", she said, and no child, especially one who had suffered as much as this one, should end up as this girl had in such a situation. The NAHB said the girl had been availing of a daytime service called "The Loft". Father McVerry said this was a service for homeless teenagers and had only opened this year. It underlined that the girl was not getting the services she needed, he said.
Speaking on RTE television last night, Ms Hanafin said the Northern Area Health Board had assured her yesterday that they had a bed for the girl in a hostel for the next week and after that she would go to a home which would be staffed 24 hours a day.
The Fine Gael spokesman on health and children, Mr Gay Mitchell, said a case as acute as this needed a compassionate and comprehensive response immediately.
"If they are not capable of responding to acute problems, and acute does not seem to cover this, it should be given to someone who can do it, such as an independent body," he said.