Industrial Dispute 'Deaths In Care Link'

A Fine Gael minister has called for further research after claiming to have found a link between an ongoing industrial dispute and the amount of deaths suffered by children while in state care.

According to Fine Gael's Spokesperson on Children, Alan Shatter, an industrial dispute in the east coast area has been ongoing since 2002 and has resulted in ongoing non-compliance with child care protection guidelines.

Mr Shatter called on the Government's Minister for Children Barry Andrews and the HSE to state how many of the 188 children, that the HSE acknowledged had died while in care, were affected by the dispute.

Speaking today, the Fine Gael Deputy said: "The existence of this dispute was first revealed by the Childrens Ombudsman in a report published by her six weeks ago. She criticised both the HSE and successive Ministers for Children for maladministration in failing to both publically reveal the existence of this dispute and for taking no action to resolve it.

"There is a genuine concern that some of those children reported to have died from unnatural causes such as suicide, drug overdoses and unlawful killings would be alive today had this dispute been resolved and the Child Care protection guidelines observed."

Meanwhile, the Children’s Rights Alliance, a coalition of over 90 non-governmental bodies working children's rights, called on the Government to instruct the Central Statistics Office (CSO) to access and scrutinise the HSE child death records, in order to restore full public confidence in the State's child protection system.

Jillian van Turnhout, Chief Executive of the Alliance, said: "The drip-feeding of figures adopted by the HSE over the past weeks has exposed its inadequate recording and monitoring system.

"The HSE's inability to centrally record vital information on its own accord has beggared belief.

"Is it not now naïve of us to simply accept their hastily scrambled together figures? What we need is for the CSO to copper-fasten the HSE figures, so that we can all move on from this depressing state of affairs.

"It is now time for transparency and scrutiny to restore public confidence in the State’s child protection services. We believe CSO verification of HSE statistics is the only route left open to Government."

(DW/BMcC)