CHILDREN’S MINISTER RODERIC O’Gorman has received the final report from the Grace case commission of inquiry.
The report will now be considered by the minister, his department and the Attorney General, before it goes to Cabinet in the autumn session ahead of its publication.
The report comes four months after O’Gorman, in consultation with Minister of State for Disabilities Anne Rabbitte, received government approval to grant the Farrelly Commission an extension of another six months.
The final report has been unduly delayed and was due to be completed in May 2019.
The Grace case concerns a young woman with profound intellectual disabilities who was left in a foster home in the Waterford area for almost 20 years despite a succession of sexual and physical abuse allegations.
In 1995, on the back of these claims, the South Eastern Health Board decided not to place any further people in the home.
However, a decision to remove Grace was overturned in 1996.
As a result she stayed in the home until a whistleblower’s complaint in 2009.
One of two interim reports - running to a total of about 800 pages - said the “evidence on the rationale for the decision was weak and confused and remembered as some unarticulated impediment or obstacle to carrying through the decision to remove Grace from her foster placement”.
The controversy resulted in the then-HSE Director General Tony O’Brien apologising to the 47 families – including Grace’s – who were in the care of the home.
The Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth confirmed in a statement today that the substantive report from the commission’s investigation is now complete.
One of the terms of reference relates to whether the facts and information gathered in the in the course of the inquiry warrants scope for any further investigations which the commission could undertake in the public interest.
The commission has provided a statement on its position to the minister, which has been referred to the Office of the Attorney General for legal advice and consideration.
In March, Rabbitte told The Journal that she and O’Gorman met with members of the commission to voice their concerns at yet further delays in the final report being delivered.
She said it was made abundantly clear that both ministers were unhappy with the pace of work.
Prior to the establishment of the inquiry, a report into the Grace scandal by senior counsel Conor Dignam was published in 2016.
Review of Certain Matters Relating to a Disability Service in the South East details the measures taken by members of the foster care home and the following actions by the HSE.
In his assessment of the HSE’s reactions to the sexual abuse allegations, Dignam concluded that the HSE had failed to investigate properly, and that there were still aspects that had not been examined fully:
“These are all allegations of the most serious nature and it seems to me that they should have been required to have been inquired into fully and expeditiously in the interests of Grace, all of those other service users, the relationship between the HSE and the service provider and the persons against whom allegations were implicitly or expressly made. Some of these matters have still not been inquired into.”
The department said the commission will now focus on the finalising of costs payable to witnesses who appeared before it.
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