The Roscommon incest and abuse case makes very difficult reading. With recriminations due to reverberate for months to come, there are obviously many questions to be answered.
For instance, how on earth in a civilised society was this horrendous spiral of unspeakable abuse allowed to happen in our midst? Of course many of the answers are being suggested as lying in legislative and constitutional change, with the individual rights of children needing to be categorically stated as superseding the rights of the family.
What I know, and what educators across this land know, is that there are thousands of identical cases such as this up and down the country. What I also know is that we are chronically under-resourced in terms of social services in Ireland. Social workers often have caseloads of 80 or 90 cases – which is absolutely ridiculous, and impossible for any professional to properly administer and to serve to a reasonable standard.
Without being a constitutional expert, it is patently obvious to all that we must close all loopholes that limit the State’s capacity to react to suspicions of neglect for the benefit of all our children. One such legislative barrier is the provision within the 2000 Education Welfare Act, which states that the functions of the National Educational Welfare Board (NEWB) are limited to children between the ages of six and 16.
Crucially there is no statutory requirement for children to be enrolled in school before the age of six, which in effect means that teachers, principals and NEWB officers are powerless to intervene in a case of chronic absenteeism of a child who is enrolled in a school under that age. At that most important developmental stage in a child’s education, the infant years, the NEWB has no statutory grounds to intervene in a case of serious absenteeism which many educators point to as a key indication of child neglect.
It is clear now that this legislation must be amended to ensure that wherever a child is enrolled in a school, the powers afforded to the NEWB under educational welfare legislation can be enforced regardless of the child’s age. Such a change would ensure that those in the school community and those charged with the responsibility of monitoring school attendance could make the maximum difference at the earliest opportunity.
It is also clear that parental blockages to obtaining assessments, whether psychological or clinical, must not longer be allowed to continue. Too often it can be a tactic of some parents, worried as to what outcomes may emerge from such tests, to refuse such examinations. Surely it should be the right of a school – which the State has charged with the responsibility of educating our children – to be the final decision-maker in relation to the suitability of applying educational tests to vulnerable children.
I can’t pretend that these measures that I’m proposing will make Ireland a safer place for our children overnight. However, I believe we must think practically and logically as to how we can amend our laws to protect our young. In the meantime, we must resource our social services sufficiently to afford them the opportunity to do the jobs they are paid to do – indeed, jobs that many of us would never do.
Aodhán Ó Ríordáin is a primary school principal in the Sheriff Street area of Dublin, a member of the Labour Party, and formerly Dublin’s Deputy Lord Mayor. His column appears every week in Metro Éireann
