Ministers To Meet HSE Over 'Death In Care' Figures

Minister for Children Barry Andrews and Minister for Health Mary Harney are to meet with Health Service management today as pressure continues to grow over the recently released figures on child deaths while in State care.

The controversy over the issue escalated when the HSE said a week ago that 37 young people in care had died in the last ten years, revising the figure up from 23 a week previously.

On Friday last it revised the figure upwards again but this time to 151 deaths. The new figure, the HSE said, was based on a wider definition of deaths to include children who were known to social services, or young people aged 18-21 who were in aftercare.

The majority of deaths (102) were due to unnatural causes with most dying as a result of suicide (26), drug overdoses (19), unlawful killings (12), road traffic incidents (18) and other accidents (27). A further 86 deaths were linked to natural causes or health conditions.

Fianna Fail's Sean Fleming has since announced that he has secured the agreement at the Public Accounts Committee to demand the attendance of the HSE's National Director of Primary Care at the next Public Accounts Committee (PAC) meeting, which will be held this Thursday.

Mr Flemming said the summons was necessary after Ms McGuinness' public statement last week that “twenty children have died in the care of the health services over the past ten years. Some of them died from natural causes, as a result of congenital defects, or by misadventure.”

Deputy Flemming said: “It is now clear that we were given wrong, untrue and inaccurate information on a most important and sensitive issue. The HSE now know this to be the case and yet have not attempted to correct the information that they gave to the Public Accounts Committee in March.

“I am putting down a marker that all witnesses who appear before the Public Accounts Committee must ensure that their evidence stands up. Where this is not the case they must realise that there are consequences and the PAC will not let the matter go.”

Yesterday, a Fine Gael minister called for further research after claiming to have found a link between an ongoing industrial dispute and the amount of deaths suffered by the 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.

(DW/GK)