Fresh documents reveal that ‘Ideal Care’, the company with whom Tusla cut ties following revelations that they had not conducted proper background checks on staff, failed to purchase new clothes for a child in their care for a period of five months to the point that “his clothes do not fit him”. The child in question was reported to have spent all his time in his room playing computer games, and had ceased attending school. The Alternative Care Registration and Inspection Reports for 2023 have been released to the Aontú Leader Peadar Tóibín TD, following a Parliamentary Question to the Minister for Children.
Ideal Care, which is currently under investigation by Gardaí for having ‘fabricated’ pre employment staff checks and altering vetting files, is one of 27 companies which provided ‘Special Emergency Accommodation’ to children in State Care. Between 2022 and 2023 the company received over €9 million from Tusla for their services. The inspection reports from 2023 show that the three inspected centres had only one child each in their care during this period.
There are, at any given time, roughly 5,500 children under the care of Tusla, 90% of these children are in foster care, and 7% in residential care. However, in recent times Tusla have begun to rely on ‘SEAs’ to accommodate children, which they’ve openly admitted in a letter to Deputy Tóibín are “unregulated placements mostly in rented accommodation, apartments and houses with staffing from third party providers”. There are currently 170 children in these arrangements, 106 of whom are unaccompanied minors seeking international protection in Ireland.
Ideal Care Services were subjected to an unannounced inspection between 7th and 8th February 2023, which found, among other issues, no police check for one staff member, an out-of-date work visa and unclear garda vetting. The report noted that there was one young person residing in the location, and that “the staff member with unclear vetting was currently working“. The young person in question had “refused to attend school since December 2022“, and inspectors noted that they “did not see evidence of any alternative education placement being sourced”. They spoke to the young person who said that they did nothing but “play games console and spend time in their room”. The report goes on to say that “when asked about addressing goals, making plans for the future, doing work with the staff, the young person stated that this did not happen”.
Inspection of two centres operated by the company took place on 7th and 28th March 2023. In the case of one of these centres, which was in operation as a Special Emergency Arrangement, the company is recorded of having “failed to advise” Tusla of it’s existence. The inspection into that centre was triggered after Tusla only became aware of its existence following receipt of “unsolicited information” from HIQA. Both centres inspected were accommodating one child each.
The inspector visited the company’s offices during the review into the unregistered centre to view their staff files and had “immediate concerns about the authenticity of the information supplied in the files”. The report goes on to explain that “the same or similar wording was used in a substantial number of references that were purported to be written by different people from different organisations. For example, five different referees, from five different companies over a span of ten months all wrote the same words in their reference for four different candidates”. The signatures, in some cases, at the bottom of the reference, did not match the named referee. The inspector also had suspicion that a Garda Vetting Declaration may have been altered.
A third inspection of Ideal Care Services was conducted on the 25th May 2023, inspectors spoke to the same young person with whom they had spoken in February. This report noted that while there was an activity plan in place for the child, “if he did not want to follow the plan for that day then he just stayed in the house playing his computer games”. It was during this inspection that the issue of clothing came up during an interview with the young person, and staff at the centre. The inspector in this report says: “There has been no new clothes bought for him since Christmas and his clothes do not fit him. The manager confirmed that the agency does not buy clothes for the young person”. The report also points to the fact that the same young person, the sole young person in the residence, had been in the care of the company for one year at the time of inspection.
Other concerns raised during this inspection included the fact that the staff names on the rota did not match with the names of the staff on shift during the inspection. Concerns were also raised over the child’s diet and an online consultation with a nutritionist was scheduled for two days after the inspection.
Two centres operated by Ideal Care Services were removed from Tusla’s register on 20th June 2023. Last month a series of articles in The Irish Times Newspaper reported on the company in question, including that there is now a Garda investigation into the falsifying of staff files. Prior to the publication of these articles, the CEO of Tusla told RTE’s Today with Claire Byrne that all staff in SEA’s were “absolutely” vetted. This, we now know, was untrue.
This week, singer/ songwriter Harorah Cinders published, on YouTube, her song – “Johnny We’ll Remember You”. A powerful goosebump-inducing tune and lyrics. I’ve always been a fan of Hanorah’s work, and her ability to convert true historical events into song. When I’d finished conducting my research into the life of Johnny Potter, I reached out to her, hoping she might be interested in writing a song about him. She didn’t disappoint! You can listen to her production here:
In light of her production, I thought I’d pen this blog to explain, with the aid of historical documents, just who Mr Potter was, and what type of things he witnessed in his life.
Johnny Potter was born in 1843 to Arthur Potter (1798 – 1875) and Catherine Potter nee Kelly (1807 – 1887). He was born in a one-roomed thatched cottage in the townland of Cloondahamper. He had three sisters and one brother: Mrs Ellen Collins (Imanemore), Mrs Jane Rabbitte (Cloonboo – Jimmeen Rabbitte’s wife), Mrs Bridie Nestor (Corskeaghmore) and Edward ‘Ned’ Potter (Cloondahamper).
The house in which Johnny was born still stands in Cloondahamper. It is no longer thatched, but roofed with galvanize and used as a shed for cattle – it is located in Cleary’s yard.
Above: Johnny Potter’s home.
When Johnny was two years old the potato famine hit Ireland. It began to end in 1850, when Johnny was seven years of age. What happened his family during that time remains unknown, as the church records and civil death records don’t go back that far in these parts.
Johnny’s life, spanning from the famine all the way into the 1920’s was so utterly tragic, that it warrants songs and poems to be written about it – and I am glad that this has been done. I intend here to construct a time-line of what we know, through records, about the old man who, one hundred years ago from today, leaned against a gate in this village, smoking a pipe and contemplating his life.
1843: Johnny Potter is born.
1846: As Johnny celebrates his 3rd birthday the talk of the day is that the authorities in Galway have run out of money, food prices are soaring and the government have denied a request from Galway for Indian Maize and a loan.
1847: The worst year of the famine sees roughly 2,700 people die, mostly from starvation, in workhouses each week. Johnny turns four years of age.
1851 – 1855: Less than a mile from Johnny’s home, some thirteen families, consisting of a total of seventy people, are evicted from their homes in the townland of Lisnaminnaun / Kidsfort.
1862: Johnny’s sister Jane Potter marries Jimmeen Rabbitte from Cloonboo, in Killererin Church, and moves in with the Rabbitte family.
1867: In Killererin Church, Johnny’s sister Bridie marries Tom Nestor from Corskeaghmore and moves in with the Nestor family.
1871: 2nd February, Killererin Church, Johnny’s brother Ned Potter marries their next-door neighbour Margaret Long and builds a house at a right angle to Johnny and his parents’ house in Cloondahamper.
1871: 22nd March, Cloondahamper, Johnny is recorded as ‘present at death’ for his neighbour, 70 year old widower, Tom Burke, who died from a debility from which he had suffered for nine months. There was no medical attendant present at the time of death.
1874: 1st September, Johnny’s brother Ned (who lives right beside Johnny) buries his son Patrick Potter, who died aged three months, having sufferred from convulsions for two days. There was no medical attendant present at the time of death.
1875: Killererin Church – Johnny’s sister Ellen Potter marries James Collins from Immanemore and moves in with the Collins family in that village. This leaves 32-year-old Johnny living in the house alone with his ageing parents Arthur and Catherine.
1875: 24th November, Immanemore, Johnny’s father Arthur Potter (who has been staying with his daughter Mrs Collins in Immanemore) dies at the age of 77 years from a debility which he has had for eight months. There is no medical attendant at the death and the death certificate is witnessed by Arthur’s son-in-law James Collins. Arthur was born the same year as the rebellion – 1798.
1879: 27th May, Clonberne Church, Johnny Potter, aged 36, marries Mary Hughes from Skregg, Kilkerrin. Mary moves in with Johnny and his mother Catherine in Cloondahamper.
1879: August 21st, Knock, Co Mayo, during a regional famine less than 20 miles from Johnny Potter’s home, a number of individuals report that they’ve witnessed an apparition of the Blessed Virgin, the Lamb of God, St John the Evangelist, St Joseph and a host of angels at the gable wall of a rural church.
1880 – 1890: Johnny and his wife Mary Potter have a total of eight children throughout the 1880’s and into the early 1890’s, all born at home in Cloondahamper, registered in Tuam and baptised in Killererin Church.
1887: 19th March, Johnny’s mother Catherine Potter, farmer’s widow, dies aged 80 from old age, without a medical attendant. Johnny is present at her death and is recorded as such on her death certificate.
1887: 2nd June, Cloondahamper, less than three months after the death of his mother, Johnny’s son Arthur (named after Johnny’s late father) dies aged 2 from Croup, without a medical attendant.
1894: October 24th, Johnny’s 11-year-old daughter Mary dies from Pulmonary Congestion. Johnny is recorded as ‘present at death’ by the registrar. Two days later Johnny is recorded as ‘present at death’ also for his neighbour 20-year-old John Hawd.
1895: 15th April, Cloondahamer, less than a year after the death of Mary, Johnny’s other daughter Nora / Honor, succumbs to Whooping Cough, aged just over one year.
1895: 9th July, less than three months after loosing Nora, another daughter of Johnny’s, Katie, dies aged 14. Johnny is recorded as present at her death in Cloondahamper.
1895– 1897: Construction is completed on Cloondahamper National School.
1901: Cloondahamper, the census records Johnny and Mary Potter as living in Cloondahamper, with their two daughters Brigid aged 14 and Maggie aged 8. Their third daughter Ellen is living with her aunt Mrs Nestor in Corskeaghmore.
1902: Cloondahamper, death of Johnny’s daughter Ellen Potter aged 16 from Pulmonary Tuberculosis. Ellen had been living with her aunt Bridie Nestor nee Potter in Corskeaghmore, but moved back to Cloondahamper shortly before her death. Johnny is recorded as ‘present’ at her death.
1911: Cloondahamper, the census records John Potter and his wife Mary and daughters Brigid aged 23 and Maggie aged 18 as living in Cloondahamper. John and Mary declare in the census that they have been married for 32 years, that they had eight children, two of whom were still living.
1912: 27th June, Johnny’s daughter, Brigid Potter dies aged 24 from fever in Tuam Workhouse.
1914: June 5th, Cloondahamper, Johnny’s wife Mary Potter nee Hughes dies aged 64 from inflamed kidneys. This leaves John aged 71 living with his only surviving daughter Maggie aged 21. World War I begins a month later.
1915: Killererin Church, Johnny’s only surviving daughter Maggie Potter marries Tommy Collins from Clonberne. Tommy Collins moves into Potter’s house.
1916: 23rd April, Cloondahamper, Johnny’s first grandchild Mary Collins is born. Mary is named after her grandmother, Johnny’s late wife Mary Potter nee Hughes. Mary is born the day before the 1916 Easter Rising.
1917: 13th April, Cloondahamper, Johnny’s second granddaughter is born – named Maggie Collins, after her mother.
1918: May 3rd, Cloondahamper, Johnny’s third granddaughter Brigid Collins is born, named after her aunt, Johnny’s daughter Brigid Potter who had died just six years previously. A twin boy is born on the same day as Brigid, according to the family, but died at birth.
1918: May, Cloondahamper. Tragically, after giving birth to her third child, Maggie Collins, nee Potter dies at the age of 25 years.
1918: May, Cloondahamper: Johnny Potter, aged 75, famine survivor, has now outlived his wife and all eight of his children. He is living with his widower son-in-law, Tommy Collins, and three granddaughters Mary aged 2, Maggie aged 1 and baby Brigid.
1919: Cloondahamper, John’s brother Ned Potter dies aged 86.
1920: 4th September, Moylough Church: Just two years after his wife Maggie’s death, Tommy Collins marries for a second time – to Bridget Hoban from Cloonascragh. Tommy brings his new wife into Johnny Potter’s home. It is understood that children from the first marriage (Mary, Margaret and Brigid) are sent away to live with relatives. Two sons John and Frank Collins are born from the second marriage in 1922 and 1924, respectively. None of the people now occupying the home of 77-year-old Johnny Potter are of any blood relation to him.
1922: Boston, USA, Johnny’s niece Margaret Potter, alludes to the sadness of Maggie’s death in a letter to her mother (Margaret Potter nee Long) in Cloondahamper. “Poor Maggie, and I’m sure you all miss her”, she writes.
1923: October 10th, Cloondahamper: Bridie Miskell (grandmother of this author) is born in Cloondahamper.
1923: Cloondahamper, two days after Christmas, Johnny’s niece Margaret Potter, who has returned to visit from the USA dies aged 37 from pneumonia. She left, in Cloondahamper, a suitcase filled with postcards and letters which she had received while in the USA.
1924: 3rd September: Cloondahamper, Johnny Potter dies at the age of 81 years and is buried in Killererin Cemetery next to his wife and eight children. No medical attendant is present at his death, and his death is notified by his son-in-law, Tommy Collins, who subsequently inherited all of Mr Potter’s property.
Johnny’s name has not been forgotten in Cloondahamper – Mrs Delia Nolan nee Burke passed his story down to her son James Nolan (RIP 2021), who in turn passed it to me.
There is nobody alive today who remembers Johnny Potter, but my grandmother’s sister Julia McDermott nee Miskell, who died only last year aged nearly 100 years, had a vague recollection of the old man, with a beard, who smoked his pipe leaning against the gate into Cleary’s field. This image features in Hanorah’s song.
Johnny’s only grandchildren – Bridget, Margaret and Mary lived relatively long lives. Bridget was a Mrs O’Brien in Kilkerrin, and she has many descendants, as has Margaret (Mrs Bane), who live in the locality. Mary never married. The names ‘Maggie’ and ‘John’ have carried down in the descendants right to the present day. They say that there is no greater pain imaginable than that of a parent who has buried a child. How must Johnny have felt as his eighth and final child was carried in a coffin up Killererin Hill all those years ago?
Anyone who has spent time with me, worked with me, or chatted to me over the past few months is likely to have heard me lament about the ‘Alice Case’. I thought I’d write this blog to explain, in detail, who exactly ‘Alice’ is.
There are certain professions where it is deemed unhealthy to bring one’s work home with them. Mine is one such profession – I work for a TD in the Dáil. I do bring work home with me because for me it isn’t work – it is a vocation – a passion. Frankly, for me, the issues I come across on a daily basis are too important to be left on a desk at 5pm. If I have the power to help people, then I feel a moral obligation to do so regardless of what day of the week it is, or what time of day it is.
I have returned home, in the past few months, to complete my degree in University of Galway. I am still working for the same TD, but at reduced hours. When I reflect on my time working in the Dáil, one case stands out, one individual who rang my landline looking for help. An individual who I tried, but failed, to help. This person is ‘Alice’.
At this point I must caution that this blog will be long. It will be complicated and it will discuss topics pertaining to child abuse. For those who would rather not read on such a topic, I suggest you stop reading here. For those who have the stomach for this – you are going to be shocked by what you read.
I am penning these words – between lectures – in the hopes that I can articulate this complex case in such a concise way so as to trigger some political interest in this situation, beyond that of the TD I work for, or the political party of which I am a member. Every TD and Senator in this country has been made aware of this case, and yet, as far as I can see, Deputy Peadar Tóibín is the only one taking it seriously or doing anything about it.
The story of the child ‘Alice’ is horrific – the State’s refusal to remove her from a foster home where she was being abused, despite their knowledge of this abuse is a scandal of enormous proportions. However, a scandal of equal measure is the State’s reaction to the disclosures and their active persecution of Alice in adulthood when she tried to blow the whistle on her case. I would strongly encourage you to read to the bottom of this article in order to get an understanding of the full gravity of what has happened here. This is not a ‘Systems’ Failure’, or a ‘Victim slipping through the cracks’. No, this is a case where Gardaí and child protection officials went out of their way to punish a survivor of child abuse in a manner so utterly evil and cruel that it can scarcely be believed.
“But he who shall harm one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!“
– Jesus Christ
Let me start by outlining a rough timeline of events. ‘Alice’ is a pseudonym which Tusla ascribed to a woman who contacted them in recent years requesting an internal review of her case and the time she spent in foster care in this State. Tusla produced the ‘Alice Report’ in 2020, and Alice has furnished me with a copy of this harrowing document.
Alice was born in this country in the 1970s. She and her siblings lived in horrific conditions from the get go, where they were frequently beaten and raped by their mother’s partner. The children came to the attention of the local Social Work Department in December 1985. The issues of concern at that time were in relation to the deterioration of Alice’s mother’s health, financial issues and the mother’s “dependency on her older children in maintaining the home and caring for their half siblings”. Case records, unearthed by TUSLA as part of the Alice review (2020), dating to this period also note the Social Work Department’s concerns for the relationship the older children had with their mother’s partner, the father of the younger children.
The children were subsequently taken into care following a house fire and in October 1987 an allegation of sexual abuse was made by Alice’s sister against her mother’s partner. The disclosure, the report says, was “validated in a hospital report dated October 1987”. The author of this hospital report, from a Sexual Assault Treatment Unit in Dublin, concluded that the children were “at great risk”, and recommended that the children be met with as part of the validation process.
The TUSLA review, however, states that the records they examined “provide no evidence to verify that this recommendation was followed through”and that there was no evidence of follow-up with the Gardaí in relation to the alleged perpetrator of the abuse.
In 1987 Alice and her siblings were placed in foster care. It was here that the children faced even further physical, emotional and sexual abuse. As part of the review, TUSLA have discovered an ‘undated letter’ from Alice’s birth mother, in which she stated that Alice had been “beated on the head” by the foster carers. Again, in relation to these allegations the review team could not find information to “verify if these had been followed up and/ or investigated with Mrs B (birth mother), the foster carers or any of the children identified”. We know this letter has to have been written by Alice’s birth mother some time between 1987 (when the children were taken into care) and 1989 (when the birth mother died).
In January of 1989 Alice’s birth mother died after suffering a brain hemorrhage. The review states that “the reviewers did not locate any information on case files to demonstrate how the children were supported with this experience”. When I asked Alice how she learned of her mother’s death she told me that she was at Mass in the local church, with the foster family, when she heard her mother’s name read out by the priest as ‘recently deceased’. This was the manner in which she and her siblings learned of their mother’s death.
Throughout 1990 Alice reported feeling unhappy to her social workers, and the case files note her concerns that she was being treated differently than the foster family’s own children. They also show that the foster mother was complaining to social workers about Alice’s behaviour.
Despite these concerns, and the birth mother’s allegations prior to her death, Alice continued to reside with the foster family until March 1992. At this point Alice ran away to live with an older half sibling. She was 16 years of age, and left her placement without the consent of foster carers, the district court or the local Health Board. In effect, she ran away.
In February 1995 an older sibling wrote to the social worker expressing concerns that one of her half siblings (who was then still in care – with the same family) was being subjected to physical abuse by the foster family and was being questioned by the family “after each social work visit”. It was at this point that additional allegations of physical abuse were made by another of Alice’s younger siblings, ‘Ms H’, while separately Alice and a third sibling made further allegations of physical and emotional abuse against the same foster carers.
It would be two months before the children were removed from the foster placement.
Tusla’s review team could not locate evidence on the case files that the allegations of physical abuse were reported to the Gardaí.
At a case conference in March of 1995 a recommendation was made that all other foster children who were previously placed with the family – a total of sixteen children – should be interviewed by the social work department. However the review could not verify that such interviews were conducted.
Eventually in April 1995, at least six years after Alice’s birth mother made allegations that the children were being abused, the Social Work Department confronted the foster parents with the allegations. The abuse was confirmed and the remaining two children in the foster placement were formally removed. The period of time which social workers allowed to elapse between the allegation being made and the children being removed from care was somewhere between six and eight years.
It would, however, be almost a year before a decision would be reached in March 1996 that the foster family in question should no longer be considered or used as approved foster carers.
Throughout the 1990’s the children began to speak and make multiple allegations regarding the time they had spent in the care of the foster family. In 1998 Alice’s sibling ‘Ms H’ made allegations of sexual abuse naming the biological son of the foster family as her abuser.
The Tusla report found that at a case conference in 1999 a further recommendation was made that the Social Work Department should meet with all sixteen of the children who had been in the care of the family. Again, the reviewers could not locate evidence that this recommendation was followed up or completed. However, the review states that Alice’s sister had made a statement to the Gardaí and that the alleged perpetrator had been interviewed by Gardaí, that he had admitted the sexual abuse, that a file had been sent to the DPP and that the DPP decided not to prosecute.
In recent months Alice’s sister, ‘Ms H’ contacted the Gardaí, in light of the Alice Report, to seek copies of her files under GDPR. The Garda Data Protection Unit responded to Ms H’s request by email stating that “it does not appear that the incident (reported in 1999) was forwarded to the DPP”.
This statement obviously stands in direct contradiction to the statement in the Tusla report which suggested that the DPP had decided not to prosecute.
In a previous letter dated 12th April 2022 the Data Protection Unit had confirmed to Ms H that a PULSE file was logged on the matter dated to September 1999 but that they couldn’t find any written statements made about the offences and that “there is no suspected offender named nor is there any detail logged”.
We have raised these discrepancies in the Dáil on many occasions – asking the Minister where the documents are and who raided the contents of the Pulse file.
We have not received answers to our questions.
The story of Alice and her siblings was aired on RTE’s Morning Ireland in July of this year, and you can listen back to it here:
A quest for justice by one family following abuse they suffered in foster care. Thanks to Ms H & Alice for their patience and trust over the last six months. Two wonderful people. ⚠️Report relates to child sexual abuse. https://t.co/3GDjavig8R
On July 25th 2022 I accompanied Alice and her partner to a meeting with the Minister for Children, Roderic O’Gorman, during which he apologised to Alice in his capacity as Minister.
The Minister for Children and Equality has held a meeting with Alice, a survivor of severe abuse while she was a child in foster care
Alice was accompanied by Aontú spokesperson on Children and Equality, Luke Silke. https://t.co/sRLQrYwsiv
Alleged Perpetrator Still Involved In Underage Sports Club
In recent times I have been contacted by an individual who shared proof with me that Alice and Ms H’s alleged abuser is now involved in an underage sporting organisation. I am intentionally not specifying the particular role this individual has within the organisation because I do not wish to identify him – but you may take my word for it that this role would involve regular contact with young people.
Presumably the alleged abuser had to be Garda vetted before he was appointed to this role and presumably the Gardaí would have cleared him given that the pulse file does not contain his name, or his victim’s statement, or indeed his own confession to sexual abuse.
This is, I think you’ll agree, an extremely serious matter. Given the gravity of this situation I decided to make a protected disclosure to both the Department of Children and Department of Justice. When I failed to get a response we opted to raise this matter again in the Dáil on 15th December 2022. A junior Minister at the Department of Justice told Deputy Tóibín he couldn’t comment on specific cases, and in the same reply implied that we were being too vague and that we should have been more specific…
RTE’s Social Affairs Correspondent covered this Dáil exchange:
Peadar Tóbín said he had no choice but to raise questions because he said the Dept of Justice had not investigated disclosures made by his office relating to interpretation of the Protected Disclosures Act https://t.co/kHrxxfBYzo
This case, thus far, stinks of cover-up or conspiracy. We have a Garda pulse file, but the contents of it are missing. We have the Child and Family Agency saying that the abuser of Alice’s sister confessed to abuse, and that a file was sent to the DPP, but that the DPP had decided not to prosecute, and on the other hand we have the Gardaí saying that no file was ever sent to the DPP.
I’m afraid these issues are but the tip of the iceberg.
Alice, as I said previously, ran away from the foster home where she was being abused. She left the home with £10, in the 1990s, bought a bus ticket and walked into a nursing home looking for a job, at the age of sixteen. She built her life on that ten pound note. Despite her trauma from her time in care, Alice remains a very strong and driven character. She has been fearless in her pursuit of justice for herself and her siblings. Alice is a mother herself, she has resisted the State’s attempts to take her children from her and has raised them well. Her children are adults now and are doing well for themselves. Alice has a fantastic sense of humour and she has also spent hours studying the law and the regulations and has consequently become an expert in the submission of Freedom of Information Requests.
Throughout her campaign for justice, Alice has retained all copies of correspondence pertaining to her case, and has meticulously recorded absolutely everything. She has supplied me with all of this documentation and I can confirm that every word you’re about to hear is the truth.
Throughout the past three decades Alice made a number of disclosures of abuse to social workers and Gardaí. As I’ve outlined, nobody has ever been prosecuted, and no investigation was ever conducted into the allegations for years. I’ve also seen proof, as I’ve said, that one of the alleged perpetrators of the sexual abuse, whom TUSLA say has confessed to the abuse, is not being caught by the Garda vetting system when applies for roles which bring him in contact with minors. This appears to be because all the documents, including the victim’s statement and the alleged perpetrator’s confession, are missing from Alice and Ms H’s pulse file.
I am aware that I am using complex terms here and referencing technology used by Gardaí. Let me simplify it… Imagine it this way – Alice’s sister asked Gardaí for a copy of documents relating to her decades’ old report of abuse. Imagine the Gardaí got back to her and said “we’ve found an envelope in our achieves, across which is written ‘all the documents relating to alleged sexual abuse of Alice’s sister’, but the envelope is empty”.
In recent years Alice triggered an police ombudsman (GSOC) investigation into the Garda station which failed to act upon her disclosures decades ago. The ombudsman did not rule in Alice’s favour. Alice has since discovered, under Freedom of Information that during the course of that investigation, the same Garda station (the one under investigation) wrote to the local county council to falsely inform them that Alice had a conviction record (which she does not). They shared this false information and fictional account of the crime, with the council at a time when Alice was applying to the same council for a council house. This occurred in the middle of the GSOC investigation into the Garda station. This action by Gardaí presumably had a negative impact on Alice’s housing application. Alice remains on the housing waiting list, seven years later, she has not yet been offered a house.
When Alice discovered the email exchange under Freedom of Information she raised the matter with the Gardaí, who in turn confirmed that she does not have a conviction and apologised to her for the email which they said was sent in ‘error’. The matter was reported on the front page of the Irish Examiner in July last year.
Gardaí wrongly told local authority that child abuse survivor had conviction when applying for housing assistance https://t.co/kRbx0djaOu
I shall leave it to the reader’s judgment as to whether or not this was an innocent ‘error’.
That’s not the end of it.
There are two social workers from Alice’s past, who failed to report her abuse to the Gardaí and who failed to act on her disclosures at the time. For the sake of this article I’m going to refer to these social workers as ‘Mary’ and ‘Margaret’. These are not their real names.
Audio Files Removed From Tusla Offices:
Mary is since retired. In the aftermath of Tusla’s review into Alice’s case (2020), they discovered that certain audio files, which feature Alice making her disclosures to Mary, were stored in Mary’s attic for years (despite her having retired, and despite Alice not having knowledge that she had been recorded). Tusla do not seem to be taking this data breach seriously. The files were not discovered until after Tusla had produced the Alice report.
Social Worker Married to GSOC Officer:
‘Margaret’, the second social worker who failed to act on Alice’s disclosures years ago, is still employed by the State – the HSE – and works in the area of Mental Health. ‘Margaret’ is married to a GSOC officer. I have been unable to determine if the fact that one of the social workers (who failed to act on Alice’s past disclosures) is married to a GSOC officer had any bearing on the outcome of the GSOC / Ombudsman investigation into the handling of Alice’s disclosures…
In recent years, after Tusla investigated Alice’s case, Alice was referred for support with her Mental Health. When she attended the recommended facility she discovered that ‘Margaret’ was working there. Alice naturally was very distressed by this discovery. It is hard to comprehend just how difficult it must be to sit in front of a suspicious looking psychologist or psychiatrist with a notebook in his hand, and try to explain to him that the social worker who wronged you in your youth, or who failed to report your allegations of child abuse, is sitting in the next room drinking tea. Was it a coincidence that Alice was referred back to a facility where she would have to come face to face with the social worker from her past?
Alice wants a full and proper State Apology from the Taoiseach on the record of the Dáil for herself and her siblings. She also want a Commission of Investigation into the State’s handling of child abuse allegations, particularly ones which relate to children in care, past and present. The Grace Case was subject to the Farrelly Commission of Investigation, but that investigation is only focused on one foster home. We have examined child abuse in every other setting – Mother and Baby Homes, Clerical Abuse, etc but we have neglected to investigate the rate of abuse within the fostering system in the past.
The Alice Case is not unique. I have been contacted, since it broke in the media, by many other victims of abuse which they experienced while in foster care. The parallels between these cases are deeply worrying. What happened here? We either had a State which, in complete contradiction to the #MeToo movement, said loudly and clearly “We do not believe you” to each of these children. There is also, however, something more sinister at play here. I would argue that Alice and her family have not been ‘failed’ by the State, they have in fact been actively persecuted by the State. The State knew they were being abused, but allowed the abuse to continue.
When Alice came forward to seek an investigation into how her allegations were handled, she was met with resistance. The Gardaí refused to record her sister’s testimony, and the DPP refused to prosecute the abusers. Social workers who wronged Alice were promoted within the HSE and Tusla. Nobody was ever prosecuted for what they did to Alice, and nobody who failed Alice was ever disciplined or dismissed from their roles within State organisations. When Alice triggered a GSOC investigation into the Garda handling of her case, the Gardaí invented false allegations of criminality against her, and shared this false information with the body to whom she was applying for a house.
When Alice asked Tusla to conduct a review of her case, she was referred for mental health assistance to the very social worker who wronged her in the past by failing to inform Gardaí of her allegations.
This is a scandal of enormous proportions. If you believe that Alice deserves a Commission of Investigation and a State Apology, please email the Taoiseach and Minister For Children and let them know of your views on this matter. webmaster@taoiseach.gov.ie and minister@equality.gov.ie
(Below lyrics from Daniel O’Donnell’s version of “Who the Heck is Alice?” )
“Sally called when she got the word
She said “I suppose you’ve heard?”
“About Alice?”
Well, I rushed to the window and I looked outside.
I could hardly believe my eyes,
As a big limousine pulled slowly into Alice’s drive.
I don’t know why she’s leaving,
Or where she’s gonna go.
I guess she’s got her reasons,
But I just don’t want to know
For twenty-five years we’ve been living next door to Alice”
In 2018, TUSLA told the Department of Children and Youth Affairs that there were at least 126 children illegally adopted through the St Patrick’s Guild Adoption Society. A review which was subsequently commissioned by the Department found that a potential 20,000 adoption records could represent cases of illegal birth registration.
Illegal Adoptions, or ‘Illegal Birth Registrations’ largely relate to instances where a person was born to one mother, but their birth was registered to another – the woman who would raise the baby – thus the name of the birth mother was not recorded on the person’s birth certificate. This practice was and remains illegal. It has caused an enormous amount of hurt to many people up and down the country, who grew up to believe that they were the biological son or daughter of the couple who reared them until such time as the secret was revealed – perhaps on the ‘adoptive’ parents’ death beds, or due to a family member taking a DNA test. I’ve spoken to victims of this illegal practice who told of how overnight, their perceptions of who they were, of their lives, of their families were shattered, and their identity utterly lost.
Some details in the personal stories are extremely difficult. In some cases women who were not pregnant faked pregnancies as part of the illegal adoption process – through the use of cushions beneath their clothes, and fake pregnancy appointments with a Gynecologist. One such Gynecologist was Prof. Eamonn De Valera Jr, the son of the former President & Taoiseach. Professor De Valera was notorious for facilitating illegal adoptions.
This week, the government have published a report by the Special Rapporteur on Child Protection, Conor O’Mahony. The report, which interestingly is dated to September 2021, is available here: https://equalityie-newsroom.prgloo.com/resources/lb0wn-byfy1-haudq-m2nnn-78ik8. A very professional job by Professor O’Mahony, and certainly worth a read. The report deals with ways in which the State could respond to the issue of illegal adoptions.
This article does not serve to report on this report, nor will I make any proposals about how the State should respond to the issue. Over the past number of years I have committed myself to determining when the State knew about this scandal, and why nothing has been done about it sooner.
I work for a politician – Peadar Tóibín TD, the leader of the political party Aontú. My interest in the issue was sparked when a whistleblower, working for the State, contacted our office, and made a number of disclosures on the issue of illegal birth registrations. The whistleblower said, among other things, that the Department has always been reluctant to look into or investigate this matter. They said that an attitude of cover-up still existed, that the Department has known about the issue for years prior to 2018, and that the terms of reference for the MBHCOI – the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation were deliberately set to exclude mention of illegal adoptions and that officials had refused to share illegal adoption files with Ministers.
This individual said that an attitude exists in the Department whereby unmarried women who found themselves pregnant in years gone by are still being considered ‘guilty’, and to some extent viewed as deserving of the plight they endured in Mother and Baby Homes. This whistleblower shall remain anonymous in this article, but what I will say is that they were able to prove to me that they were who they said they were, and that they were working for who they said they were working for.
Naturally I began probing the issue, by way of parliamentary questions. The Minister did not deny the allegations when they were raised in parliament. The Irish Times Newspaper reported on the story here:
My boss, Deputy Tóibín and I submitted a series of Written Parliamentary Questions on the topic in the days and weeks and months that followed. The Minister’s attempts not to answer the questions lead me to believe, all the more, the allegations made by the whistleblower.
We asked the Minister when the government became aware of the issue of illegal adoptions, and were constantly told that the first they knew of it was in 2018. I then requested copies of departmental records dating to the 1990s which I suspected would relate to the issue of illegal adoptions. What happened next was most bizarre. The Minister for Children said that the files in question were not held by his department, and that they were held in the Department of Health. He said this on the 10th March 2021.
You will note from the response above that the Covid-19 situation is used as an excuse – the pandemic made it, the Minister said, “extremely difficult to access physical files”. You will also note that the review into the practice was published the day prior – the 9th March 2021. It is interesting that the report was published by the Department just four days after RTE Investigates ran a program on the matter despite the report sitting on the Minister’s desk since May 2019!
We then asked the Minister if he would express his opinion on statements made by the former UN Special Rapporteur on the Sale of Children, in which she had called for an inquiry into illegal adoptions in Ireland. As you can see below he does not answer the question, and states that records on illegal adoption “may simply not exist”.
Since the files I was seeking were not held by the Department of Children, I decided to submit the question instead to the Minister for Health, who of course advised me that it was not his responsibility, and that if I wanted access to the files I should ask the Minister for Children…
So back I went again to the Minister for Children, tail between my legs, like a teenager who has been told, by their father, that they can go to the disco if their mother says its okay. The excuses just weren’t washing with me – first we were told by the Minister for Children that he didn’t have the files and that they were with the Department of Health. Then we were told by the Minister for Health that we should ask the Minister for Children about it. We were told that the files were somewhere between both departments in the process of being transferred. We were told that Covid-19 meant that they couldn’t get at the files, and now we were being told that the files didn’t exist? Not a chance.
I confess that my imagination did conjure up images of a big arctic truck carrying files, getting stuck underneath a bridge half it’s size, in the middle of Dublin, or boxes in a basement which were so sticky with Covid-19, germs and cobwebs that the Department officials couldn’t physically open them. These images faded though, when I learned that both Departments share the same address – the Larry Goodman-owned Miesian Plaza on Baggot Street. So there was no need for a truck, and there was no basement. The only feasible explanation is that boxes of illegal adoption files were left on the corridor between both Departments for twelve months, and that Stephen Donnelly asked Roderick O’Gorman each morning “What’s in those boxes?”, before both shrugged their shoulders and entered their respective offices. I mean, either that or else one or both Ministers were lying to us?
I was getting frustrated, but I wasn’t giving up. By November the Minister for Children had conceded to the existence of one solitary record, which he said “broadly resembles the description”. He wasn’t going to release the record just yet though, because, you know… ehm…. GDPR. He also said the record didn’t make specific reference to illegal adoptions. This of course is true, the record doesn’t contain the words ‘illegal adoptions’, it merely contains detailed descriptions of illegal practices and illegal adoptions.
In February 2022, some eleven months since we first asked the question, we asked it again, just to see where we stood. At this point the Minister was still looking into the GDPR ramifications of releasing the file.
Finally, on Wednesday 9th March 2022, Minister O’Gorman released the documents, all 31 pages of records to us via email. The records are damning. The fact is the government knew about the practice of illegal adoptions, as early as 1996. The date of these records – letters to the Department of Health – show that the government knew about the issue, some 22 years prior to the date upon which they maintain they first became aware of them.
Five days after releasing the documents to me, the Minister for Children published the report from the Special Rapporteur on Child Protection- he published this report yesterday. The report is dated 30th September 2021. The report recommends a State Inquiry into the matter and confirms that the government knew about it all along. An RTE Investigates program will air on the matter tomorrow, Wednesday. Whether any ensuing State Inquiry will focus on establishing when the government knew about the issue and scrutinise the government’s actions from the moment they became aware of this illegal activity in 1996, remains to be seen.
I have this morning emailed copies of the documents released to us, to over 500 journalists in the country. I hope this blog has given some insight into how difficult it is to extract information from government departments. Very often in this country things don’t change until after RTE Investigates air an exposé.
If any whistleblower, or any affected person wishes to make a comment, please feel free to email me at lukesilke98@gmail.com.
More than 50 children died in the Glenamaddy ‘Children’s Home’ which predated the Tuam Mother and Baby Home and was operated by the same nuns between the years of 1922 and 1925.
On the first day of January 1922, a nun by the name of Sr Hortense McNamara notified the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages in the district of Glenamaddy of the deaths of Bridget Naughten, Mary Woods and Martin Collins. Three infants who had died under her care in the Children’s Home in Glenamaddy over Christmas week.
Bridget Naughten died just two days before Christmas from Bronchitis. She was six months old. Mary Woods died of Gastritis just five days later on 28th December 1921 aged seven months. Three days later, on New Year’s Eve 1921, one-month-old Martin Collins died of what is termed a ‘congenital debility’.
In recent years Dr Catherine Corless, a local historian in Tuam made international waves when her research revealed that 798 babies died in the Tuam Mother and Baby Home during the time period that it was operated, by the Bon Secours Sisters, between 1925 and 1961. Sr Hortense McNamara was the Reverend Mother in the Tuam home during that time. Dr Corless’ research on the topic sparked a government-initiated Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes which published its final report earlier this year.
In recent times I have conducted research and can reveal that between the time of the closure of the Glenamaddy Workhouse in November 1921 and the opening of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home in 1925, Sr Hortense informed the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages in the Glenamaddy district of at least fifty infant deaths which had occurred under her care in the ‘Children’s Home’ which was in operation during that four-year period.
Sr Hortense was in the habit of reporting the deaths in chunks. She reported three deaths on 1st January 1922, seven more on 4th April 1922, three more on the 6th June 1922. On the 2nd August 1922 she again reported four deaths to the registrar, followed by six on the 29th August, eight on the 14th November and on 30th December 1922 she reported a further two deaths. In all she reported 33 deaths in the year 1922.
In 1923 Sr Hortense reported thirteen more deaths, followed by four in 1924 and four in 1925. The total death rate over the four years stood at 54 infants. (NB: The database in which these death records are stored was extremely difficult to navigate so it is very possible that this figure is higher).
I include below the list of those who died:
Bridget Naughten, 23rd Dec 1921, six months old – Bronchitis
Mary Woods, 28th Dec 1921, seven months old – Gastritis
Martin Collins, 31st Dec 1921, one month old – Congenital Debility
Patrick Coates, 1st Jan 1922, ten months old – Bronchitis
Maggie Rabbitte, 19th Jan 1922, fifteen months old – Gastritis
Thomas Sheridan, 25th Jan 1922, four months old – Congenital Debility
Thomas Devin, 28th Jan 1922, four months old – Congenital Debility
Mary Crowe, 1st Feb 1922, one year old – TB?
Kate Walsh, 20th Feb 1922, ten months old – Bronchitis
Kate Lynskey, 12th Mar 1922, ten months old – Pneumonia
Christopher King, 29th Mar 1922, one year old – Congestion of the Lungs
Mary Noone, 19th Apr 1922, eight months old – Congenital Debility
Christopher Mead, 25th May 1922, eight months old – Congenital Debility
Annie Howley, 26th May 1922, three months old – Congenital Debility
Joseph Hession, 2nd Jun 1922, fifteen months old –
Josephine Welby, 3rd Jun 1922, six months old – Tubercular Meningitis
Patrick Black, 8th Jun 1922, three months old – Bronchitis
Thomas Joyce, 9th Jun 1922, four months old – Tonsillitis
Thomas Galway, 12th Jun 1922, six months old – Gastritis
Mary Power, 19th Jun 1922, ten months old – Bronchitis
Patricia McNicholas, 25th Jun 1922, three months old – Bronchitis
Martin Conneely, 2nd Jul 1922, eight months old – Meningitis
Mary Margaret Reynolds, 3rd July 1922, four months old –
Mary McDonagh, 16th July 1922, six months old – Pneumonia
Mary Hallinan, 27th Aug 1922, one month old – Congenital Debility
Teresa Cleary, 2nd Sept 1922, three years old – Congenital Debility
John Burke, 6th Sept 1922, six years old –
Mary Quinn, 16th Sept 1922, two months old –
Mary Comer, 23rd Sept 1922, three months old – TB?
Patrick Gorum, 14th Oct 1922, five years old –
Eileen Gavin, 7th Nov 1922, one year old – Meningitis
Mary Wilkinson, 29th Nov 1922, three months old –
Francis Griffin, 28th Dec 1922, two months old – Gastritis
Delia Queeney, 8th May 1923, one year old – Congested Lungs
Patrick Coheeney, 19th May 1923, five months old –
Patrick Geraghty, 28th May 1923, one year old –
Mary Power, 4th Jun 1923, nine years old – Spinal Disease
Joseph Donnellan, 5th Jun 1923, two months old – Congested Lungs
John Hynes, 17th Jun 1923, two months old –
Patrick Devine, 20th Jun 1923, seven months old –
Kathleen Maloney, 1st Jul 1923, one year old –
Mary Kerrigan, 4th Jul 1923, two months old – Whooping Cough
Maggie Ferry, 11th Jul 1923, one month old – Whooping Cough
Mary Anne Collier, 12th Jul 1923, one year old – Whooping Cough
Mary Anne Dolan, 15th Jul 1923, one year old – Gastritis
Bessie Power, 23rd Jul 1923, eight years old – Spinal Disease
Ellen Kearns, 11th Oct 1924, sixteen months old – Meningitis
Michael Jordan, 8th Nov 1924, fifteen months old – Gastritis
Thomas Mc M? , 16th Nov 1924, three months old – Congenital Debility
Gerard Flynn, 21st Nov 1924, five months old – Meningitis
Joseph Grealish, 19th Dec 1924, one year old –
Mary Ryder, 27th Dec 1924, six months old –
(Illegible), 5th Jan 1925, six months old –
Tim Badger, 6th Jan 1925, one year old –
The Children’s Home in Glenamaddy appears in some newspaper articles of the time, with the Connacht Tribune reporting in their 7th March 1925 edition that at a recent committee meeting, “Sr Hortense, matron, reported that there were, in the Children’s Home in Glenamaddy nineteen mothers and one hundred children”.
The Connacht Tribune had previously provided some coverage in February 1923 of the monthly meeting of the County Home and County Homes Assistance Committee. The reporting by the Tribune gives a great deal of insight into the attitudes that the authorities had towards the Children’s Home in Glenamaddy. At that meeting a Parish Priest, Rev Dr Dignan brought up the issue of the transfer of power from the Board of Health to the Committee. It was noted by the Secretary of the Committee that the only powers retained by the Health Board related to fixing salaries and the carrying out of structural alterations to buildings, and that the Committee currently had “the power of making all appointments now, which was formerly the privilege of the Board of Health”.
Dr Dignan then proceeds to make a joke about how the Committee “can do nothing with the Children’s Home – burn it down or change it?” The Connacht Tribune included reference to the laughter from fellow committee members at this remark, in their report on the meeting. (The joke may be in reference to the IRA’s partial burning of the Workhouse in 1921).
A separate, more serious and perhaps tense conversation ensued at the meeting when Dr Dignan gave his views on a recent report on the home; “I believe it was said that our report on the Children’s Home was greatly exaggerated”. To which the Chairman replies that he was speaking to a representative from the Glenamaddy district “who said that the report was a very mild one. The condition of the place in scandalous”.
Above: Connacht Tribune 17th February 1923
Despite the research I have conducted over the past while, I have been unable to determine where the 54 infants who died in the Children’s Home in Glenamaddy between the years 1921 and 1925 are buried. I will keep my blog updated as I gather more information.
Concerns were raised in recent days that many former residents of mother and baby homes throughout the country are only now finding the courage to come forward with their stories and recollections of their time in such institutions. Unfortunately for people in that position the time for testifying before the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation (MBHCOI) has elapsed. It is understood that the commission is no longer accepting submissions.
Sheila O’Byrne, an outspoken campaigner for justice for the survivors of institutional abuse, who herself gave birth in the St Patrick’s Mother and Baby Home on the Navan Road in Dublin, has taken to social media in recent days with her concerns. She cites the example of Rose McKinney from Dunmore in Co Galway, one of the last surviving women who gave birth in St Mary’s Mother and Baby Home in Tuam. Ms O’Byrne says that Rose was ‘never informed‘ of the existence of the Commission of Investigation nor was she invited onto Minister Zappone’s collaborate forum. In a statement, Ms O’Byrne says she is disappointed with this and argues that the seats on the forum should have been given to surviving mothers; “the seats should have been taken up by the mothers to speak and represent the babies and children who were left in the homes”.
Above: Sheila O’Byrne with Rose McKinney
Given the fact that the commission is no longer hearing testimony, Dr Catherine Corless has encouraged survivors to come forward with their stories and share them with a team of historians in NUI Galway who are conducting a project called “Archiving Personal Histories – The Tuam Mother and Baby Home”. Speaking to Luke-Peter Silke, Dr Corless said: “it’s not too late to come forward, when the universities open again the project in NUIG is going forward, and I’d encourage people to get their stories in there”.
Dr Corless says she doesn’t know if there are many women who gave birth in the institution in Tuam who are still living; “I’ve spoken to two people from England who have given their account already, but there aren’t many still alive”. With regard to the investigation, Dr Corless remarked “it’s a waiting game”.
Dr John Cunningham, from NUI Galway’s School of History is the chair of the Archiving Personal Histories project. He told Luke Peter Silke that their main focus is “on carrying out individual interviews, and placing them in the university archives. All interviewees are given plenty of time to review their transcripts, and may set any conditions they like about when and how their testimony is made available”. Dr Cunningham says that the group are still in the early stages of the process and had wanted to hold a formal launch in March, but that was cancelled as a result of Covid_19. He added that “a number of interviews with people who were born in the home had been carried out at that stage, but the social distancing considerations obliged us to cancel others”. The group have since conducted some interviews over Zoom.
Above:Site of the former Tuam Mother and Baby Home, where infant remains were discovered in 2017.
On 14th February this year Minister Katherine Zappone announced that the government had granted a short extension to the MBHCOI – “the Commission will now submit a final report and manage the orderly wind-up of its substantial statutory investigation by the 26 June 2020”. This week the Department of Children and Youth Affairs told Luke-Peter Silke that this date has not changed – “the current position is that it is due to deliver its final report on 26th of June”, a spokesperson said. Answering a question from Deputy Catherine Connolly in the Dáil chamber today, Minister Zappone said that based on the information the Department have at the moment there has been no change to the June 26th deadline.
Interested persons may contact the NUI Galway project here.
There can be no doubt now that a series of oversights, mistakes and stubbornness from a number of bodies have proven fatal for some of our most vulnerable citizens. In this article I will set about a timeline of events which have led us to the current situation where the Coronavirus has infected roughly a third of all nursing homes in Ireland so far with 335 outbreaks in residential care settings (as of April 17th 2020).
If you examine the timeline that I’ve constructed you will see that many nursing homes were closed independently in early March, before the government dictated that such restrictions were not necessary on March 10th. The nursing homes remained open right up until 1st April 2020.
You will also note that requests, by Nursing Homes Ireland, for a meeting with the Health Minister, were ignored on both the 19th and 25th March. That on the 30th March 2020 the Minister instructed the National Public Health Emergency Team to “examine the issues in nursing homes”. The following day the DOH announced they would seek “to identify measures to help nursing homes”. On April 4th they announced the measures that they had just spent six days thinking about. These measures included that the HSE would give PPE to nursing homes, and that a financial support scheme was being set up – it would be ready, they said, ‘in the coming days’.
On April 6th, two days later, the exact same measures were re-announced.
It was revealed on April 17th, in Dáil Eireann (which had been suspended on April 2nd), that the HSE had taken the ringfenced PPE away from nursing homes. The supply was ‘intercepted’ by the HSE. It was also confirmed that ‘not a single red cent’ of the financial support had reached the nursing homes, nor had a mechanism been put in place through which care centres could apply for this financial assistance.
TIMELIME OF EVENTS:
Note: Each statement includes a hyperlink to the source.
5th – 9th March 2020:
Most nursing homes decided independently to adapt visitor restrictions.
10th March 2020:
Following a meeting with the National Public Health Emergency Team (herein “NPHET”) the Department of Health issued the following statement:
“to ensure NHI can continue to provide high quality, safe care to the 25,000 residents in the care of our members”.
25th March 2020:
Nursing Homes Ireland revealed by way of press release that no meeting with the Minister had happened ‘despite a number of requests’. They said they were ‘disappointed’ with this and called for an urgent meeting.
30th March 2020:
It is revealed that there are now seventeen clusters of Covid_19 in nursing homes. The Minister for Health and the Secretary General of the Department of Health pledge to meet with representatives of Nursing Homes Ireland. The Health Minister asked NPHET to “examine the issues in nursing homes”.
31st March 2020:
The Department of Health announced they would seek to identify measures to help nursing homes, disability and mental health residential centres:
“NPHET will work with the HSE to identify a number of measures which can be taken to strengthen support to staff and providers of nursing home care”.
1st April 2020:
The Department of Health banned nursing home visits:
“all visits to hospitals, residential healthcare centres, other residential settings or prisons are stopped with specific exemptions on compassionate grounds”.
2nd April 2020:
Dáil Eireann, the Irish parliament is suspended for two weeks. Opposition Deputies raise concerns at this decision with Deputy Marc MacSharry verbalising his concerns that:
“Parliament is being seen as an optional extra, rather than the constitutional imperative that it is”.
4th April 2020:
The Department of Health announced the following measures to help nursing homes:
“Staff screening will start in nursing homes twice a day. COVID-19 testing will be prioritised for staff. The HSE will provide access to PPE, expert advice and training. Each nursing home will be identifying a COVID-19 lead”.
4th April 2020:
The Department of Health announced a Financial Support Scheme for Nursing Homes:
“In addition to these measures, a temporary COVID-19 Financial Support Scheme is being introduced by government and will be established in the coming days, to support the critical services provided by nursing homes”.
6th April 2020:
The Department of Health re-announced the same measures they’d outlined on the 4th April:
“Each nursing home will be identifying a COVID-19 lead. HSE will provide access to Personal Protective Equipment, expert advice and training. Staff movement across residential facilities will be minimised and the HSE will support staff with alternative accommodation and transport, if required. Staff screening will start in nursing homes twice a day, COVID-19 testing will be prioritised for staff.”
15th April 2020:
Eight residents in a Co Laois psychiatric centre die from Covid_19
15th April 2020:
Independent Senator Ronan Mullen calls for an ad-hoc Public Health Support Committee to liase in private sessions with the government and NPHET regarding nursing homes. Deputy Róisín Shortall makes a similar proposal. This proposal was not accepted by the government with An Taoiseach indicating that he believed the Cabinet Sub-committee of which he is chair, would suffice.
16th April 2020:
Deputy Paul Murphy asked An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar for his opinion on how the HSE guidelines left “the individual private nursing homes with responsibility for staffing regimes, infection control and the supply of PPE”. An Taoiseach responded: “I cannot give the Deputy a straight answer to that because I do not know if that is correct. I would have to check the HSE guidelines. I am not sure if that assertion is factually true. It may be correct but I would have to check as to whether it was left to nursing homes to provide their own PPE”.
16th April 2020:
Deputy Mattie McGrath asked that the Department for Health, on foot of the concerns over nursing homes, would care to “amend the ethical framework for decision-making in a pandemic to specifically protect people with disabilities and the elderly”.
The Health Minister declined to amend the guidelines, saying: “To be very clear and provide the reassurance that people are looking for, the guidance makes it clear that everyone is morally equal, every life matters, everyone will receive care and no one factor should be taken in isolation, be that age or disability”.
16th April 2020:
Deputy Stephen Donnelly revealed on twitter that nursing homes had sought representation on NPHET but had been refused. Deputy Donnelly demanded that nursing home representatives be given seats on the committee.
“Nursing homes have no representation on (i) NPHET, (ii) NPHET sub-committee on vulnerable people or (iii) sub-committee of that sub-committee on nursing homes. They asked and were refused”
Nursing homes have no representation on: i) NPHET ii) NPHET sub-committee on vulnerable people iii) Sub-committee of that sub-committee on nursing homes
They asked & were refused. Imagine if HSE had no representation! They should be given seats immediately.
Deputy Dr Cathal Berry told the Health Minister that the Financial Support Package allocated to nursing homes had not been paid out, “not a single red cent”. He added:
“Not only has it not been drawn down but I understand that a mechanism does not even exist for it to be allocated and distributed. I also understand the National Treatment Purchase Fund has been tasked with setting up this mechanism”
The Minister replied that the financial scheme would open tomorrow (17th April 2020). The scheme was announced on 4th April 2020.
17th April 2020:
The HSE revealed that there are now 335 outbreaks of coronavirus in residential care settings:
“There are 196 nursing homes included in these clusters. This means Covid-19 has infected approximately 30% of all nursing homes in Ireland”.
17th April 2020:
Deputy Stephen Donnelly told Aine Lawlor on RTE Drivetime that he had been made aware that supplies of PPE secured by nursing homes had been ‘intercepted’ by the HSE.
17th April 2020:
RTE’s Social Affairs Correspondent, Ailbhe Conneely, told Aine Lawlor of Drivetime that in one single institution in Dublin, 11 residents have died of Covid 19 over a two-week period.
Most people reading this will have watched the HSE press briefings daily since this crisis began in Ireland, and like me, you’re probably confused, perhaps worried, wondering whether you should be blindly trusting those in charge, or sceptical as to their competence. Over the past few weeks I’ve been torn between these two positions.
Its easy to understand the public support for the government at this time, nothing like the current situation has ever been experienced by the majority of us in living history. And I say the majority of us because in recent days I have been busy phoning elderly friends and relatives to check up on them – one of them a 93-year-old nun kept me talking on the phone for an hour during the week relaying her memories of spending two years on the flat of her back in Merlin Park Hospital with TB in the 1940s.
But for most of us the Covid-19 crisis is unprecedented, and can feel at times almost apocalyptic. Its very natural and very Irish of us all to rally around and seek to work together and support the current government. The most recent opinion poll has seen a surge in support for Fine Gael. Fine Gael, the economically tight political party, the government which sought to save money – to increase the pension age, to refuse a pay rise for our nurses, to pick the country up from its knees after our most recent economic crash and pay off as much of our international debt as possible. Shouldn’t we be glad that Fine Gael are in power? That the economy is in some ways healthy as we face into this economic catastrophe?
Team Ireland
I am on ‘team Ireland’ and I accept that now is an inappropriate time for a change of government, however, there are things that this government did that must never be forgotten. On the economics front we must remember that Fine Gael overspent billions on the disastrous National Children’s Hospital and the broadband deal. They saved money to the expense of the workers, the nurses were unhappy, students were unhappy, farmers couldn’t turn over a profit, while the trolley crisis and homelessness situations were breaking new records every time statistics were released. Many people were under the impression that this was for the common good – after where the recession had left us, Fine Gael had to put things on track and we would feel a pinch but our sacrifice, many thought, would strengthen the economy. What I found most infuriating was the way the government splashed the cash which we had painfully sacrificed in a wasteful manner on the broadband and hospital projects. As I’ve said, this wasn’t millions, it was billions, which is significant given our small population and country-size.
Even with these errors in mind, joining with ‘team Ireland’ and working together is important. However, that doesn’t mean handing total power to an un-mandated, caretaker government. It means working together constructively, it mean a cross-party effort to identify ways to improve things, it means scrutiny and careful thinking and planning. Sincerity is important, but I believe does exist among opposition TDs and journalists who are asking the difficult questions and being critical. It has to be sincere. I mean, to scrutinise and criticise is not the popular thing, when Fine Gael are soaring ahead in the polls. If a politician were to act in a manner devised to save their own seats and remain popular it would totally unwise of them to level criticism at such a popular government. Those being critical are doing so for genuine reasons. It won’t make them popular, but it may save lives.
Spin
Another signatory feature of the outgoing government was spin. They chose words carefully, hid things from us and mislead us on major issues. The most blatant example of this is, of course, the cervical check scandal. A topic which I have covered extensively on this website. Whenever things got heated for Health Minister Simon Harris he always pulled some vote-winning populist press release from his back pocket to catapult a good news story involving himself onto the front pages of the daily newspapers – be it a bill to prevent the purchasing of alcohol with coupons, or free contraception, or indeed extending the HPV vaccine to boys, each of these proposals were released to the press at a time when the Minister was getting into trouble on other issues and they did, it must be said, offer a distraction from the negative stories.
We still see spin from the government and the HSE and this cannot be denied. Take, for example, the fact that testing is in a shambles, perhaps through no fault of our own, but it is in a mess. We all know someone who developed symptoms and were referred for a test, only to be left waiting up to a week before being called for a test and then up to a week to hear the results of the test. This means that the figures we get every day detailing the number who have tested positive for Covid-19, are totally flawed. They are at least two weeks behind reality, at least two weeks out of date. This blatantly obvious fact was completely ignored by the HSE’s Dr Tony Holohan who seems to think that the daily figures are cause for celebration, that they are positive, not as bad as originally expected. Dr Holohan (and I do wish him a speedy recovery and the best of good health) recently told the press: “We are beginning to see encouraging signs in our efforts to flatten the curve” (BBC News, 31st March 2020). This is ridiculous, he is concluding this from grossly inaccurate and outdated flawed statistics.
We are also seeing an immaturity, a condescension and level of arrogance from those in charge. Take for example a recent tweet from the official HSE twitter account which branded a story about the death of a nurse from Covid 19 as “fake news”, thus calling into question the integrity of the three high profile and professional journalists who wrote the article in The Irish Times Newspaper. The reality here was that Dr Holohan had confirmed that a “healthcare worker” had died and the journalists assumed it was in reference to a nurse. Rather than contacting the news outlet privately and ask them to change that one word, the HSE opted to tweet in an aggressive tone that they had been made aware of a “fake news” story!
During the week the government decided to suspend the Dáil (our Irish parliament) for two weeks. It will reconvene on April 16th 2020. Much opposition to this move was expressed by Deputies on all sides of the house, with Richard Boyd Barrett TD was firm in has announcement that the proposal from the Business Committee was “not agreed”, thus sparking a debate and commentary from others, with Mick Barry TD adding that he did not accept the proposal either, and that accountability was needed. Elsewhere on the political spectrum Fianna Fáil’s Marc MacSharry TD supported the motion with some hesitation, agreeing with the previous two deputies and saying he was worried that “parliament is being seen as an optional extra, rather than the constitutional imperative it is”.
Independent Deputy Michael Healy-Rae commended the Minister and said that he supported the government 100% “in a working together sort of way”. He said he agreed with the previous speakers that accountability was needed. The Deputy was very respectable and constructive in what he said, sincerely commending the government, but highlighting the need for the Dáil to continue to sit due to the fact “the situation is changing so quickly”. A series of other Independent Deputies from the left and the right joined in with their concerns, Verona Murphy TD and Thomas Pringle TD, among others.
The government response to these Deputies who believed it imperative that they continue to go to work? “Shame on you” huffed Minister Josepha Madigan as she began a ‘team Ireland’ type speech, implying that all of those deputies with concerns were not on team Ireland and were only interested in political point scoring. The sincerity of Deputy Healy-Rae cannot be denied, anyone who is engaged with Irish politics will be aware of the extreme rarity in the Kerryman commending the Health Minister in an effort to work together constructively. Indeed, the Minister’s subsequent nodding and gesturing back at the Deputy also seemed sincere, for me it captured the team Ireland spirit, for it was almost as if the Healy Raes and Simon Harris were ready to hug one another, an unprecedented turn of events, and one of the nicer moments in this crisis, “in a working together sort of way”. But no, the policies of spin were still firmly at play in the mind of Minister Madigan.
Testing
There is a strong argument for the continuance of the sitting of the Dáil. The argument can be summed up in one word – democracy. Opposition deputies need to be able to question the government – to relay concerns from their constituents and to genuinely help in tackling the problem. Of course those of us who questioned the standard of PPE equipment coming from China were shrugged off as not being on team Ireland, complaining for the sake of it, destructive characters. I would that the government might have listened to those concerns before they flew a team over there, came back and distributed the material in army trucks to the various Irish hospitals.
It must be acknowledged that testing does not have any impact on the survival chances of those who have contracted Covid 19. There is no treatment, there is cure. Testing helps to serve to identify those with whom a sick person has been in contact with, thus reducing the rate of spread of the virus and flattening the curve. My fear is that if our flawed, out of date figures are being presented as ‘encouraging news’ it may result in people not taking the lockdown seriously, it may lead to the false impression that we are on the other side of the curve, that things aren’t too bad at all. This in turn would lead to people leaving their homes, and further spreading the virus and raising the number of ICU beds required and increasing the death rate.
The death rate doesn’t lie, that is increasing sharply each day, however flawed the other figures may be. Most other countries release daily figures on the number of people being tested, we don’t have that information, so we have no idea how flawed our figures are. We don’t know how many symptomatic people are still waiting tests or test results. Yesterday we learned that our tests will now be outsourced but the HSE’s Paul Reid would not reveal where to. Why not?
These questions are perfectly legitimate and it is possible to be on team Ireland and still wish to ask these important questions, any narrative suggesting the contrary has, I suspect, been intentionally designed by a Fine Gael spin unit.
In an email dispatch from the Office of the HSE Clinical Lead in Merlin Park Hospital, Galway, healthcare staff management were encouraged to work to ensure that healthcare workers who suffer from HIV, or who are pregnant, are not treating Covid-19 patients.
The email, seen by Luke Peter Silke, only deals with risks in the ‘Delay Phase’ of Covid-19 and notes that those working in healthcare who are immunocompromised or suffer immunodeficiency are no more likely to contract the disease than healthy workers as long as they adhere to the recommended Infection Prevention and Control Precautions.
However, if they do contract Covid-19, they are at increased risk of developing ‘severe disease’. The email also notes that “the definition of ‘immunocompromised’ is challenging, at a minimum it includes those people defined in the National Immunisation Guidelines as not suitable for administration of the live virus vaccines”.
In the email it is highlighted that while there is “limited information” at the moment regarding the effect of Covid-19 on pregnant women, there is experience with other viruses such as SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV which suggests “adverse outcomes for the woman and for the baby”.
The email concludes that where it is possible and with the expressed preference of the healthcare worker “it is pragmatic to allocate healthcare workers who are pregnant, who are otherwise immunocompromised or who have other conditions that place them at high risk of severe disease to the care of other patients wherever practical“.
It has been confirmed by Minister Ciarán Cannon that the Athenry man who made headlines in recent days after he and his family were informed by immigration officials that they were subject to deportation orders, is on his way back to Athenry, having been released from Cloverhill Prison.
Above: Mr Da Silva with his family.
Lucivaldo Araujo Da Silva, a Brazilian father of three Irish-born children aged between 2 and 12 years, was set to be deported from this country tomorrow, Tuesday.
However, an online petition against his deportation was launched and a huge campaign fronted by the people of Athenry. It is understood that the family of five are well liked in the community where Mr Da Silva works as a painter and his children are involved in local GAA clubs.
At least two local TDs voiced their support for the family and spread the petition on social media. Fianna Fáil’s Deputy Anne Rabbitte TD, during the week, called for “compassion” and spoke on Thursday to the Justice Minister Charlie Flannagan, seeking to cease the deportation of Mr Da Silva and his family, “on humanitarian grounds”.
Above: Deputy Anne Rabbitte, Fianna Fáil.
Local Independent County Councillor – Cllr Gabe Cronnelly – last week described the situation as a “sad state of affairs” and offered his voice in support of the family while accompanying the man’s partner to visit him in prison.
Minister Ciarán Cannon, a Galway East TD for Fine Gael, has announced within the last hour that Mr Da Silva is “on his way home to Athenry as we speak”. He added that “compassion and kindness is something that Ireland is renowned for internationally”.
Above: Minister Ciarán Cannon, Fine Gael TD for Galway East.
Luke Peter Silke 