Shatter says 'Baby P' case here inevitable

CHILD PROTECTION:THERE IS a "terrible inevitability" that Ireland will have a "Baby P" case similar to that in England, because of the Government's inability to ensure children at risk receive proper protection, the Fine Gael conference has heard.

Party spokesman on children Alan Shatter claimed the Government had “utterly failed to ensure adequate protection for children at risk”.

He said: “Our child protection services are chaotic, unco-ordinated and grossly inadequate. As a consequence, there are hundreds of files relating to children reported to be at risk gathering dust on the shelves of offices of the HSE, unallocated to a social worker for proper assessment and investigation.”

Seventeen-month-old Baby P died after systematic abuse from the child’s mother, the mother’s partner and another man. “Government ministers had been forewarned about failing child protection procedures and standards in the Haringey council six months before Baby P died and had done nothing. There is a terrible inevitability that a child here will suffer a similar fate,” Mr Shatter said.

He said there was a terrible inconsistency in investigation standards in different HSE areas, with the South showing fewest assessments. The only conclusion that could be drawn from this was “that children in the Munster area are at greater risk of death, physical injury or sexual abuse than children in the Dublin mid-Leinster area”.

Referring to the announcement that the children’s ombudsman is to conduct an investigation into whether the HSE and the Department of Children have failed to comply with child protection guidelines, Mr Shatter said “we already know the answer to that question. While the ombudsman’s investigation may bring some additional transparency and accountability to our child protection services, it is essential that the Government does not use this investigation as an excuse to do nothing until it is complete”.

He said there was “a terrible hypocrisy in a Government advocating constitutional change to protect the welfare of children yet sitting idly by while thousands of disturbed teenagers, some of whom are suicidal, languish for years on waiting lists for psychiatric assessment. Fine Gael can do better”.

There was “a terrible hypocrisy in a Government advocating constitutional change to protect the welfare of children yet cancelling the only existing sex offenders treatment programme in our prisons and happily presiding over a prison service which releases paedophiles back into the community unmonitored and not having participated in any type of rehabilitative treatment programme whatsoever”.

Cllr Paddy McManus (Dublin South-East) said a referendum was needed given the “large vacuum in Irish law” in relation to the status of the child and child protection.

Cllr Patricia Gosch (Cork North-Central) said that in the Baby P case, the child suffered cruelty and torture despite 60 visits by police, social workers and others over eight months, and despite the baby having eight broken ribs and a broken back. She asked: “Are the Irish services strong enough to ensure that can’t happen here?”