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Adjusting 'our notions of the nature of the State': A political reading of

Ireland's child protection crisis
Paul Michael Garrett
Capital & Class 2012 36: 263
DOI: 10.1177/0309816812437922
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437922

2012

CNC36210.1177/0309816812437922GarrettCapital & Class

Adjusting our notions

of the nature of the
State: A political
reading of Irelands
child protection crisis

Capital & Class

36(2) 263281
The Author(s) 2012
Reprints and permission: sagepub.
co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0309816812437922
c&c.sagepub.com

Paul Michael Garrett

National University of Ireland, Republic of Ireland

Abstract
The Republic of Ireland was the first country in the eurozone to adopt a neoliberal
infused austerity budget, and the ill-judged state bailing out of a number of
reckless banks and associated financial institutions is costing billions of euros. In
late 2010, as the crisis deepened, the International Monetary Fund and European
Central Bank provided a bailout package that resulted in further punitive public
spending cuts and the eradication of national sovereignty. This paper maintains
that the present crisis is more than a mere economic crisis, but can be viewed as a
series of interlinked conjunctures. Tracing the connection between the historical
and the contemporary, the first part of the discussion will explore six thematic
components relating to the structuring of the Irish state. These are identified as: a
class rule state; an authoritarian state; a confining state; a censoring state; a
discriminatory state; and a state within the state. These six dimensions provide
a contextual underpinning for the second part of the paper, which focuses on the
crisis in child welfare and child protection services and dwells on the shambolic
performance of the Health Service Executive (HSE), deficits in the care system
and the HSE failure to furnish reliable data on the deaths of children in contact
with social workers.
Keywords
hexagonal state, Ryan Report, Health Services Executive, child deaths

Corresponding author:
Paul Michael Garrett, National University of Ireland, Republic of Ireland
Email: PM.Garrett@nuigalway.ie

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Capital & Class 36(2)

Introduction
The economic crisis that has engulfed the Republic of Ireland is inseparable from a wider
international crisis (Callinicos, 2010). However, the response by the Irish government
was to prove particularly disastrous.
When Lehman Brothers hit the wall in September 2008, the storm broke. Brian Cowens
panicked and deeply compromised government offered to guarantee the full liabilities
of Irish-owned financial institutions, exposing its citizens to a potential wallop several times
larger than the nations annual GDP. Soon afterwards, the Fianna Fil-led administration
moved to nationalize Anglo Irish, the third-largest bank in the state, and shore up its two main
competitors with huge cash injections. (Finn, 2011a: 11; see also Allen, 2009; Lewis, 2011)

The Republic was also the first country in the eurozone to adopt a neoliberal infused
austerity budget. In late 2010, as the crisis deepened, the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) and European Central Bank (ECB) provided a bailout package that resulted in
further punitive public spending cuts and a dilution some would argue eradication of
national sovereignty (McArthur, 2011). A budget in December 2010, the fourth in little
over two years, cut even deeper into public spending (Barnardos, 2010). Following the
austerity budgets, the total fiscal tightening up now stands at nearly 20 per cent of
GDP, more than double the Tory-led Coalition cuts in Britain (Burke, 2011: 140).
What is more, in a stark reprise of the colonial relationship the major holder of Irish
government debt are the British banks, with state-owned Royal Bank of Scotland at the
front of the queue (Burke, 2011: 141).
Following a general election in February 2011, a government headed by Fine Gael,
with the Labour Party as coalition partner, was formed, but there is no indication that
the crisis is to end or that this administration is intent on embarking on a new, more
socially and economically benign course (Kelly, 2011). However, the current crisis is far
more than a mere economic crisis and may be conceived as a series of interlinked conjunctures. Located within a broadly Gramscian framework, the notion of conjuncture
refers to the emergence of social, political and economic and ideological contradictions
at a particular historical moment. Here, different levels of society, the economy, politics,
ideology, common sense, etc, come together or fuse (Hall, in Hall and Massey, 2010:
59). Thus, a conjuncture is a critical turning point or rupture in a political structure,
primarily signifying a crisis in class relations (Rustin, 2009: 18). Such a multifaceted
crisis in the present order represents a potential opportunity to construct a new hegemonic settlement, which may be socially progressive or retrogressive depending on the
political bloc that emerges as dominant.
This discussion is, therefore a modest attempt to analyse the state at this conjuncture. It is acknowledged that the state in Ireland is similar to those in other jurisdictions in that it is a fluid, dynamic formation whose components shift over time.
Furthermore, the discussion will not seek to supplant or disrupt some of the other
models of the state which have evolved in recent years: for example, the notion that the
state in Ireland can be viewed as a competition state (Kirkby and Murphy, 2011). It
is understood that the state in the Republic is a neoliberal state and its core function is
to furnish an apparatus whose fundamental mission [is to] facilitate conditions for
profitable capital accumulation on the part of both domestic and foreign capital
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(Harvey, 2005: see also Allen, 2007). Following the analysis of David Harvey, it is also
recognised that here the state-finance nexus fulfils a key role, confounding the
analytic tendency to see state and capital as clearly separable from each other (Harvey,
2010: 48). Central to this model are dynamic structures of governance where the
state management of capital creation and monetary flows becomes integral to, rather
than separable from, the circulation of capital. The reverse relation holds as taxes or
borrowings flow into the coffers of the state as state functions also become monetarised, commodified and ultimately privatised (Harvey, 2010: 48). The state-finance
nexus functions, therefore, as the central nervous system for capital accumulation
(Harvey, 2010: 54). However, each state possesses its own state-finance nexus which
becomes the focus of struggle for defining some sort of rough consensus as to how
social life shall be regulated (Harvey, 2010: 63). In the Republic, social partnership
provided the key institutional mechanism for this form of regulation until the commencement of the recession (Allen, 1999). Beyond the nation-state constellation,
there is also a global architecture which provides an international version of the statefinance nexus (Harvey, 2010: 51): hence the operation of the World Bank, the ECB,
the IMF, OECD, and the G20. Indeed, as mentioned, the ECB and IMF have been
particularly important in their interventions in Ireland.
Whilst building on this analysis, the argument that follows maintains that the statefinance nexus is a somewhat insufficient model to entirely account for the complexity of
the Irish dimension. The Irish state can be interpreted as an integrated formation containing at least six separate, interlocking and shifting components. In both an historical
and contemporary sense, these will be identified and articulated as: a class rule state; an
authoritarian state; a confining state; a censoring state; a discriminatory state and containing a state within a state. This mapping of the hexagonal state provides a prism to
examine a particular facet of the conjunctional crisis: the disarray within child and childprotection services in the Republic.
In the early years of the 21st century, discussion on child abuse has mostly focused
on that perpetrated by priests and members of religious orders (Murphy et al., 2005;
Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, 2009; Commission of Investigation, 2009;
Commission of Investigation, 2010).1 Here, political, media and popular discourses
have, not without reason, focused on the issue of clerical abuse, but this perspective
risks producing a highly partial, incomplete interpretation of events (Garrett, forthcoming; Keenan, 2012). Moreover, the contemporary social-work literature in Ireland
also tends to be rather narrow in its focus and fails to incorporate a more expansive and
political reading of the crisis. Nevertheless, as the Irish Times maintained, in its comments on the Ryan Report on abuse in Irelands Industrial Schools (Commission to
Inquire into Child Abuse, 2009), there needs to be an adjustment of our notions of the
nature of the State to accept that it helped to inflict torture and slavery on tens of thousands of children (Editorial: The savage reality of our darkest days, Irish Times, 21
May 2009: 19, emphasis added). The paper also seeks, therefore, to respond to the task
the Irish Times perhaps an unlikely prompter has set. In seeking to do this, the discussion will dwell on the shambolic performance of the Health Service Executive
(HSE), deficits in the care system and the HSEs failure to furnish reliable data on the
deaths of children in contact with social workers.2

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Mapping the hexagonal state

A class rule state
In 1914, James Connolly (1973: 275) predicted that partition was likely to result in a
carnival of reaction in both the north and south on the island of Ireland. Following the
partition of the country, each of the separate jurisdictions was to become culturally
repressive under different, dominant religious traditions. Moreover, the political and
economic power of the large and middling farmers who have been described as the
nation building class in the early years of the Irish Free State (1922-37) was to prove
crucial. The nation-state they built largely conformed to their interests and ideology:
conservative, principally agricultural and dominated by the most conservative type of
Catholicism imaginable (Lloyd, 1999: 103; see also Coquelin, 2005).
Within the field of child welfare, there were countervailing and oppositional tendencies campaigning for more progressive policies. For example, the Joint Committee of
Womens Societies and Women Social Workers established in 1937 and, over the last
twenty years, the various child abuse survivors groups. However, the direction of policy
and practice has often rendered such groups marginal. In recent years, a largely compliant and politically compromised trade union leadership has hindered the potential radicalism of the labour movement, the main source of a more encompassing, alternative
politics. The social partnership approach has now been ditched by the government
(Allen, 1999), but the upper echelons in the union bureaucracies have mostly resisted
acknowledging this and its stopstart mobilizations, intended to secure a return to the
bargaining table, have been ignored by the government. Every time a march has been
called most recently in the immediate wake of the EU-IMF deal there has been a very
healthy turn-out, followed by months of inactivity (Finn, 2011a: 35).
Since the 1930s and into the current economic crisis, Fianna Fil tended to form,
along with coalition parties, government administrations. The Republics electoral hegemon, aptly described as the most important secular institution in the modern Irish state
(Finn, 2011a: 13-14), it has favoured dominant economic interests whilst skillfully
orchestrating a populist/clientist politics to combat potentially counter-hegemonic forces.
Indeed, McNally (2009: 88) refers to the remarkable capacity of the party to adapt and
rejuvenate its equilibrium to the historically changing arena of Irish politics. However, as
mentioned, this dominance ended with the general election in February 2011 (Finn,
2011b). Fianna Fils unflinching commitment to protect a thoroughly corrupt banking
system and its ruthless determination to load the burden of the crisis onto the lower end
of the social scale resulted in its electoral base being decimated (Finn, 2011a: 13-14). In
Dublin, it was left with only one out of the capitals forty-seven seats in the Dil.
The state has been consistently neglectful toward the economically and socially marginalised. Even at the peak of the boom and during the years of partnership, the
Republic:
had little reason to boast about its social performance. It ranked second-to-bottom in the
OECD league tables for poverty and inequality; only the US fared worse. Inequality increased
during the period of highest economic growth, with the number of households earning below
50 per cent of the average income rising from 18 per cent in 1994 to 24 per cent in 2001. Other
benchmarks shifted in the opposite direction: government expenditure on social protection as a

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proportion of GDP stood at 20 per cent in 1993, but had fallen to 14 per cent by 2000 barely
half the EUs average. (Finn, 2011a: 12)

It would also now be entirely erroneous to assume that the ECB and IMF have
pushed the Dublin government down a path it would rather not tread, given that their
suggestions have been accepted with something that closely resembles glee (Finn, 2011a:
13). Economic elites have been keen to take on the public sector unions for some years
and are now using the crisis to pursue a ruthless form of class politics (see also Klein,
2007). Thus, it is the Republics poorest who are facing the most severe cuts. 16.3 percent of children in Ireland live in poverty, well above the OECD average of 12.7 percent
(More Irish children live in poverty than OECD average, Irish Times, 19 April 2011: 3).
Despite this, punitive budget cuts in 2009 represented a 31 drop in the weekly household budget for a family of four wholly reliant on social welfare. In the same budget, a
lone parent with two children became poorer by 21.52 per week (Barnardos, 2010).

An authoritarian state
The Ryan Report commented on the culture of obeying orders without question within
Industrial Schools institutions where abuse took place (Commission to Inquire into
Child Abuse, 2009, vol. 2: 80), yet a similar ambiance can be identified in other spheres
of life within the Republic.
An authoritarian ethos was attached to an array of segregation and confinement strategies and, already by 1924, there were more children in Industrial Schools in the Free
State than there were in all of the Industrial Schools in England, Scotland, Wales and
Northern Ireland put together. In addition, a grid of incarcerating institutions existed to
contain what Bauman (2004: 146) now critically labels social waste: those perceived as
out of place, deviant, or ambiguously troublesome. A plethora of institutions were
created for juvenile delinquents, the mentally ill and mentally handicapped (see also
OSullivan and ODonnell, 2007).
These emergent domains were frequently reshaped post-colonial institutions,
despite occasional attempts to erase foreign approaches to the poor and socially marginalised (Sweeney, 2010). In clerical and political discourses, a particular fixation
existed with how to regulate unmarried mothers (Glynn, 1921; MacInerny, 1922,
Sagart, 1922; see also Garrett, 2000a; 2000b). Symbolically, the first Mother and
Baby Home established for the reform of first time unmarried mothers and their
babies was established by the Order of the Sacred Heart in County Cork, in 1922, the
year in which the Irish Free State was formed. This institution, Bessborough, provided a prototype for other envisaged services. Often managed by the Church, these
various establishments were interconnected. For example, children of unmarried
mothers could easily find themselves in Industrial Schools (Arnold, 2009: see also
Smith, 2007). In addition, the threat of removal to a more fearsome and coercive
institution would be likely to impact on the behaviour of rebellious or recalcitrant
residents and blunt dissent.
Shifting context, the independent and largely politically tame Nyberg Report,
purportedly examining the cause of the Irish banking crisis, has detected the pervasive

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authoritarian atmosphere that helped to silence critical perspectives at odds with the
official and accepted opinions, within the banking sector and beyond: Domestic
doubters were few, late and usually low-key, possibly because it was thought that expressing contrarian views risked sanction (Commission of Investigation into the Banking
Sector in Ireland, 2011: viii). For Nyberg and his colleagues, a main lesson is the need
to make sure, both in private and public institutions, that there exist both fora and
incentives for leadership and staff to openly discuss and challenge strategies and their
implementation. It must become respectable and welcome to express professionally
argued contrarian views (Commission of Investigation into the Banking Sector in
Ireland, 2011: ix-x).

A confining state
In present day Ireland, prisons are bulging and prison chaplains have observed a growing
disregard for the dignity of the human person and a worrying erosion of compassion.
Conditions are reported to be an insult to the dignity of any human being and an affront
to the basic tenets of decency (Irish Prison Chaplains: 10). Confined in stultifying environments, with insufficient rehabilitative possibilities, the predicament of todays prisoners is, in fact, disquietingly similar to that of detainees in Industrial Schools:
We feel that the situation within the prison system is now so bad that we have no option
but to challenge the prevailing culture, a culture of conformity which resists any criticism
or challenge, is apparently unable to hear any alternative views and is unwilling to listen to
the opinions or suggestions of those who do not conform to the dominant way of thinking
that exists within the management structure. (Irish Prison Chaplains, 2010: 10-11)

In the much-criticised St. Patricks Institution, the way prisoners (aged 16 to 21)
are managed raises particular concerns. This is the states largest facility for young
offenders, and national and international bodies have repeatedly condemned deplorable conditions over the past 25 years. This is not only because the detention of
young people under 18 is in direct contravention of the United Nations Convention
on the Rights of the Child, which forbids the imprisonment or detention of children
with adults, it is also because the Ombudsman for Children is explicitly prohibited
from investigating complaints or allegations by the young people located there. Like
the inmates of Industrial Schools in the past, young people detained in St. Patricks
Institution are not allowed to wear their own clothes (unlike every other prisoner in
every other prison) (Irish Prison Chaplains, 2010: 19). More generally, as prison
chaplains maintain, St. Patricks Institution is a warehouse for young people, many
of whom were broken by childhood experiences. By entering into a harsh and
punitive system, they are further broken down. It is a demoralising, destructive and
dehumanising experience, with few redeeming features (Irish Prison Chaplains,
2010: 20; see also Holohan, 2011).

A censoring state
The Ryan Report referred to the flow of knowledge on the abuses taking place within the
Industrial Schools, but this information was suppressed. The corrosive culture of secrecy
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(Byrne, 2009a: 13) was also detectable in the treatment of the survivors of abuse and the
so-called gagging clauses imposed on former residents awarded financial compensation.
These prevent those who receive redress from talking about their experience of the scheme
or from divulging how much compensation they were awarded. While survivors can discuss publicly details of their abuse in institutions, they are rendered voiceless when it
comes to their stories of redress (Byrne, 2009b: 13). Moreover, the penalty for breaking a
confidentiality clause is a fine of 3,000 or six months in jail on summary conviction in
the District Court, or 25,000 or two years in jail on indictment (Commins, 2010).
Another paradigmatic example of the states censoring power is provided by the report on
the deaths of children in Monageer in which the text was drastically redacted and a number of pages bizarrely, including many of the reports recommendations were deleted
(Lunny et al., 2008). The names of key officials connected to children who either died or
were abused in public care are routinely omitted from subsequently published inquiry
reports (see, for example, Report of a Committee of Inquiry, 1996; Gibbons, 2010).
Comparable elisions are apparent in the Nyberg Report, which, despite disclosures from
more than 140 key respondents, failed to identify any named individual (Commission of
Investigation into the Banking Sector in Ireland, 2011).

A discriminatory state
Women had been active both politically and militarily during the Easter Rising, the War
of Independence and the Civil War (Valiulis, 1994: 84-85). In 1922, women over the age
of 21 were also enfranchised in the Irish Free State: a move in contrast to the position in
the six counties of Northern Ireland and Britain, where women between the ages of
21-30 were not entitled to vote until 1929. Nevertheless, the period between the signing
of the Treaty and the approval of the new Constitution, Bunreacht na hireann, in 1937
witnessed the contraction of women's public and political role (ODowd, 1987: 4).
After 1922, a number of legislative measures were introduced to curtail the role of
women and to ease women out of the public sphere. In 1925, the Civil Service
(Amendment) Act limited womens opportunity to enter the civil service and, two years
later, the Juries Act removed women from jury service. In 1936, the Conditions of
Employment Act curtailed womens employment. Womens reproductive rights and sexual morality also consistently featured as controversial issues throughout the period of
the Irish Free State. Divorce, legalised eventually in the 1990s, was banned in 1925
(Whyte, 1971: Ch. 2). State policy regulating birth control derived from the Censorship
of Publications Act 1929 and the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act 1935. These two
measures banned birth control literature and the sale and importation of contraceptives.
Underlying the entire censorship debate was, moreover, asserts Clancy (1990: 211) a
desire to extend control over aspects of women's lives in general. The dominant
construct of motherhood was finely demarcated and unmarried mothers (somehow
counterfeit or bogus mothers) were, as mentioned earlier, subjected to processes of coercion and creeping criminalisation. Women on the island of Ireland continue to be denied
the right to choose whether or not to have an abortion (both within the northern and
southern jurisdictions) (Oaks, 2002).
Racism is encountered in embedded and socially pervasive ways by Irish Travellers
(Fanning, 2002). However, despite criticism from the UN, successive governments have

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refused to recognise Travellers as an ethnic group. In recent years, some migrants have
also encountered racism and xenophobia (Lentin, 2007; Lentin and McVeigh, 2006;
White, 2009). Prior to the recent downturn, this may have been somewhat muted
because of the buoyant economy. Many sectors of the Irish economy (such as the hospital, social care, cleaning and restaurant work) remain dependent on non-Irish workers.
Moreover, these workers are regarded as cheap labour, easily disposable (Dundon et al.,
2007: 502). Asylum seekers are rigidly segregated, with 52 direct provision centres established in April 2000, and almost 6,000 asylum seekers are still living in them for more
than three years (see also Christie, 2006). These are privately operated establishments
with contracts with the Reception and Integration Agency (RIA): residents are given
19.10 euro each week to live on and provided with a shared room and meals in
hotel-style accommodation. A person waiting for their asylum claim to be decided by
the state has no right to work. Even more seriously, many unaccompanied children
seeking asylum went missing from state care in the past decade. Importantly also, a 2004
amendment to the constitution provided that children born on the island of Ireland to
parents who were both non-nationals would no longer have an automatic and constitutional right to Irish citizenship.

A state within the state

The position of the Roman Catholic Church within the Republic is historically significant because it was primarily governance from the Church rather than the state
which framed interventions with children and families (Skehill, 2004: 52-3). As the
report into child abuse in the Archdiocese of Dublin observed, the Church remains
not only a religious organisation, but it also continues to be a human/civil instrument of control and power (Commission of Investigation, 2009: 14). Despite never
having been an omnipotent presence, the Church has undoubtedly been a key component in the hegemonic ensemble responsible for governing Irish society: recognising
that Harveys focus has never been on Ireland, the institution cannot be adequately
catered for in his state-finance nexus paradigm.
Alluding to the changing relationship between the Vatican and the state, the Irish
Times has recently claimed the days of genuflection are over (Editorial, Irish Times, 13
December 2010: 13). However, WikiLeaks disclosures revealed how subservient the government can still be, notably in failing to press the Vatican to co-operate with the inquiry
into clerical sexual abuse in the Dublin diocese (Commission of Investigation, 2009).
Following the publication of the Cloyne Report (Commission of Investigation,
2011), the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny (2011) made a statement in Dil
ireann in which he castigated the Vatican. It included the following:
The revelations of the Cloyne report have brought the Government, Irish Catholics and
the Vatican to an unprecedented juncture. Its fair to say that after the Ryan and Murphy
Reports Ireland is, perhaps, unshockable when it comes to the abuse of children. But
Cloyne has proved to be of a different order. Because for the first time in Ireland, a report
into child sexual-abuse exposes an attempt by the Holy See, to frustrate an Inquiry in a
sovereign, democratic republic as little as three years ago, not three decades ago. And in
doing so, the Cloyne Report excavates the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism the narcissism
that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day. The rape and torture of children
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were downplayed or managed to uphold instead, the primacy of the institution, its power,
standing and reputation. Far from listening to evidence of humiliation and betrayal with
St Benedict's ear of the heart the Vatican's reaction was to parse and analyse it with the
gimlet eye of a canon lawyer.

The statement, although perhaps seeming to substantiate the idea that a new relationship is now being forged in terms of the states relationship with the Vatican, can also be
perceived as the coalition government opportunistically and cynically seeking to achieve
a sense of legitimacy, and to be providing a moral compass in a period in which it is also
responsible for introducing salary and welfare cuts. The Church also remains a significant ideological and material power within the Republic. Its power may be slowly and
subtly eroding, but it is still strong. No one is afraid of priests anymore but they still
appoint the teachers and run the schools (Toibin, 2005: 6). For example, although the
new government appears to be committed to changing the situation, the Church currently controls 2,899 of the 3,282 primary schools in the state, catering for 92 per cent
of pupils (OToole, 2009: 3). What this underlines is the vulnerability of a State which
owns and controls so little of its vital social infrastructure (Raftery, 2009: 16). The
Church has also been historically resistant to child-centred education, and frequently
stymied the development of public health systems. More recently, the fields of Church
and the corporate or business sector have become more porous (Allen, 2007). This has
been reflected in suggestions that a way of rectifying previous failures is for the Church
to adopt a business and managerial approach to internal governance (see, for example,
Murphy et al., 2005).
Tracing the connection between the historical and the contemporary, the first part of
the discussion has sought to explore six thematic components relating to the structuring
of the Irish state. In the second part, the paper focuses on the crisis in child welfare and
child protection services. Here the aim will not be to methodically attach facets of this
crisis to each of the six dimensions. Rather, the six dimensions provide a contextual
underpinning for the evident problems in the child welfare and child protection sector
which have been highlighted, particularly following the publication of the Ryan Report.
What is more, children and families forming the bulk of social workers caseloads are
frequently exposed to the six-sided state in its most tangible and harshest form.

The crisis in child welfare and associated spheres

Days after the publication of the Ryan Report, in May 2009, a coalition of seven charities and pressure groups working with children and survivors of abuse issued a press
release stating Never Again (Barnardos et al., 2009; see also Childrens Rights Alliance,
2009a; 2009b). One of the early official responses to the Ryan Reports twenty-one
recommendations, perhaps its weakest section, emerged from the Office of the Minister
of Children and Youth Affairs (2009). It spelt out how the government was to react to
what the serving and reforming Catholic Archbishop of Dublin referred to as the stomach-churning stories of abuse featured in the Report (Systematic, endemic abuse in
State institutions laid bare, Irish Times, 21 May 2009: 1).
Many of the commitments set out by the Minister are likely to be regarded in a somewhat cynical way because of successive Irish governments inclination to produce reports,

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or even legislation, which rarely becomes operational. Alternatively, there is considerable

delay in full implementation, as occurred with the Child Care Act 1991, which only
fully came into force five years later. Similarly, A Vision for Change, a blueprint for modernising mental health services, has still to be implemented. In the aftermath of Justice
Ryans inquiries, the then ruling Fianna Fil administration remained intent on drastically reducing the number of public-sector workers despite a pledge to increase the number of social workers. In this context, continuing staff vacancies will have a deleterious
impact on the ability of childcare professionals to assist families. Despite an expansion in
the profession in the past thirty years, the relative number of social workers employed
remains below that in Northern Ireland (see also Gilligan, 2009; Buckley, 2010). Indeed,
even prior to the present crisis, the National Social Work Qualification Board (NSWQB)
referred to a syndrome of permanent temporary posts, with the field of social work
being destabilised by patterns of precariousness and corrosive casualisation (NSWQB,
2006: 10).
Significantly, the Ryan Report makes the connection between the abusive practices of
the past and vulnerability of a number of groups in contemporary Ireland located in sites
of confinement and quasi-confinement:
While the industrial and reformatory schools with which the Commission was chiefly
concerned belong to the past, there are still a great many people in institutional care within the
State today. In addition to children, the State is responsible for the care of vulnerable adults,
such as those with disabilities, mental health difficulties and older people It essential that
the State reviews its policies, systems, management and administration in relation to the care
of vulnerable adults in the light of the lessons learned from the Commissions Report. (Office
of the Minister of Children and Youth Affairs, 2009: 23)

This statement is important because of the numbers of people involved: there are
approximately 9,000 adults with disabilities in residential care. In 2008 there were
1,096 patients in long-stay wards in psychiatric hospitals and a further 1,664 in fulltime residential care with mental health services. Nursing homes and community
hospitals care for about 23,000 older people (Office of the Minister of Children and
Youth Affairs, 2009: 24). In addition, these numbers could, of course, be supplemented with the asylum seekers held in so-called direct provision facilities, and
children in detention.
As mentioned, the way that young prisoners are managed in the much-criticised
St. Patricks Institution raises serious concerns. Continuing anxieties also exist about
the practice of placing children in adult psychiatric wards. An HSE code of practice,
which came into effect in July 2009, states that no child under 16 years should be
admitted to adult psychiatric units apart from in exceptional circumstances. However,
at least 100 children under the age of 18 were admitted to adult psychiatric facilities
in 2010, despite a commitment by the HSE to phase out the practice. An inspector
of mental health services has described the practice of admitting children to adult
centres as inexcusable, counter-therapeutic and almost custodial in that clinical supervision is provided by teams unqualified in child and adolescent psychiatry (see also
100 children placed in adult psychiatric units, Irish Times, 7 October 2010: 2; see also
Bonnar, 2010).

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The Health and Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) reported that staff in a
third of the states residential centres had not been properly vetted, and that the children
placed there were at unnecessary risk. Similarly, many foster carers have not been vetted.
The HIQA has also called on the HSE to immediately cease using one of its three secure
units for troubled and vulnerable young people Ballydowd due to concerns over the
safety of child residents. This was echoed by the HIQA in subsequent reports, which
expressed grave concerns regarding the safety for children within one of the other
units, Coovagh House in Limerick (Health and Information Quality Authority, 2010a;
2010b; 2010c).
The publication of the Ryan Report on child abuse in the past coincides with a
manifest and more widespread contemporary crisis within child welfare and child protection services. For example, the awareness and consistent implementation of
Children First (Department of Health and Children, 1999) the protocol guiding
arrangements for inter-professional working and the protection and welfare of children remains a continuing challenge (Office of the Minister for Children, 2008: v).
Two key issues are significant:
the absence of consistency in the delivery of child welfare and protection services across
the country and, more importantly, the absence of any standards against which delivery of
services can be benchmarked and monitored [It is] incontrovertible that there are major
inconsistencies in the implementation of the Children First guidelines throughout the country.
(Office of the Minister for Children, 2008: 14-15; see also Ombudsman for Children (2010)

Kemp (2008: 107) has detected a somewhat paradoxical tendency whereby the more
attempts are made to control and standardize practice, the more divergent practice
appears to have become. Specifically in terms of Children First, no sooner had the
document been launched than variations were adopted by each Health Board. Instead of
standardising practice, it merely led to greater degrees of divergence and localised
arrangements (Kemp, 2008: 107).3 A heavily censored report published in 2008 also
drew attention to the lack of a national emergency or out-of-hours service (Lunny et al.,
2008). A further report criticised Roscommon social workers for their inadequate
response, over a number of years, to a family in which abuse and neglect had occurred
(Gibbons, 2010). Many of these deficiencies had been already identified in previous
inquiries (see, for example, Report of a Committee of Inquiry, 1996).
The Childrens Rights Alliance (2009a: 8) has condemned the dysfunctional HSE
care system. Under the Child Care Act 1991 and the Child Care Regulations 1995,
children in care should be allocated an authorised person (delegated by the HSE to
social workers) to carry out all regulatory functions on their behalf. However, HSE data
for April 2009 revealed that 83.6% of children in care had an allocated social worker,
while just over 16% did not According to HSE April 2009 data, [only] 64% of children in care are reported to have a care plan (Office of the Minister of Children and
Youth Affairs, 2009: 35). In certain localities, the problems are more serious: for example, almost half the children in foster care in Dublin North West and a third in Dublin
North Central have not been allocated a social worker by the HSE, according to the
HIQA. The inspection body also identified serious problems related to the management
of files on foster children, which were stored in unlocked rooms and often contained

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incorrect names and dates of birth of children. There were files missing and a number of
personal items belonging to children such as photographs, letters and baby bracelets
had simply been left to fall from files onto the floor without any accompanying identification tags. It was revealed that the HIQA chief executive had, moreover, warned the
HSE chief executive of the large numbers of children in care, living with unapproved
carers, who have not seen or been seen by an HSE authorised person for a considerable
period. On account of this, the HSE was in breach of the Childcare (Foster Care) regulations (Many children in foster care have no social worker, Irish Times, 10 March
2010: 7). However, subsequently and following the audit of more than 1,000 foster
care files by the HIQA it was reported that many children in care have not been visited
by an authorised person for many years. (Some children in care not seen by social
workers for 10 years, Irish Times, 8 June 2010: 1).
These HIQA findings reveal that the HSE is unable to safeguard children in care. The
failure to meet the statutory requirement to ensure that children in care are visited by a
social worker at least once every six months also resonates with the disregard shown to
children revealed in the Ryan Report. In this context, child protection groups have
strongly criticised the slow pace with which the Ryan recommendations are being implemented (see also the website of the pressure group Saving Childhood Ryan, <www.savingchildhoodryan.ie>). Furthermore, the pledged new social worker and speech therapist
posts outlined in the previous governments post-Ryan implementation plan have been
considerably delayed (Office of the Minister of Children and Youth Affairs, 2009; see
also Therapist posts not filled due to funds shortage, Irish Times, 23 February 2011: 5).
Furthermore, the plan to appoint a czar with the power to oversee the HSEs childcare
policies and according to previous Minister for Children with the capacity to do an
X-ray of the service, hardly appears to be a meaningful response to the nature of the
problems that have been identified (Childrens czar to be recruited abroad, Irish Times,
10 June 2010: 12). The task of providing an X-ray of services seems more appropriately
to be the responsibility of the democratically elected member of Dil ireann with ministerial responsibility. However, in December 2010, the HSE announced that Gordon
Jeyes, a former director of the UKs childrens services, was appointed to this, a two-year
post to lead organisational and cultural change (Health Services Executive, 2010).
Other actions, such as the decision to dissolve the Children Act Advisory Board, suggest
that any attempts to respond to defects in childcare and protection systems are likely to
be, at best, highly problematic and insufficient. The new Fine Gael/Labour administration has appointed a new Minister for Children, who will have Cabinet status, but this
is unlikely to have a major impact.

The deaths of children and young people in care

During 2010, the deaths of children and young people in care and the failure of the HSE
to produce robust and reliable data emerged as a key issue (see Table 1). The incompetence of the HSE can be interpreted as part of a culture of inertia, secrecy and disrespect
not only to the specific dead children and young people but, more expansively, for those
often troubled and impoverished families in contact with social services. Indeed, the
multisided Irish state is revealed in its most transparent and brutal form, in its actions
and inactions, and in its failure to produce accurate information on the death of children
in care and contact with social workers.
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Table 1: Deaths of children and young people in care reported by the media.
Kim ODonovan (15), found dead after a suspected drugs overdose in city centre bedand-breakfast accommodation (August 2000).
Tracey Fay (18), found dead in a disused coal bunker after injecting herself (January
2002).
Shane Hafford (16), died in an apartment in Drogheda near to the childrens home in
which he had been placed (April 2003).
David Foley (17), died of an overdose three years after voluntarily seeking care from
the state (September 2005).
Melissa Mahon (14), killed while she was in HSE care. A man was found guilty of her
manslaughter in May 2009 (September 2006).
Michelle Bray (14), died after inhaling the contents of a deodorant can (January
2007).
William Colquhoun (18), in residential care when he died (July 2008).
Christopher ODriscoll (17), discovered in a derelict house in Cork having died from
pneumonia exacerbated by drug-taking (May 2009).
Danny Talbot (19), in the care of the HSE. Died following a suspected drugs overdose
(summer 2009).
Daniel McAnaspie (17), originally from Dublin, went missing in February 2010, when
in the care of the HSE, and was later found in a ditch in Co. Meath having been
stabbed to death (May 2010) (see also Ingle, 2010).

In March 2010, it was reported that the HSE had not published a single report on the
death of a child in state care since it was formed in 2005. Moreover, no independent
child death review system was in place until that same month, when the Minister for
Children established an expert group to investigate the deaths of children in care over
the last decade. This Group was then criticised by the Ombudsman for Children (OfC)
because of its lack of statutory powers and independence. At this time, a senior HSE
official told the Public Accounts Committee that 20 children had died in state care over
the previous decade. However, the Minister for Children informed Dil ireann that the
number was 23 (HSE ordered to speed up reporting of deaths of children, Irish Times,
5 March, 2010: 1). Soon, though, reports began to emerge that suggested that the true
figure was far in excess of this number.
The lumbering and secretive HSE compounded problems by refusing to hand over
the relevant files to the independent panel set up by the Irish government. This prompted
the Minister for Children to seek legal advice on how to deal with what was supposedly
an executive agency of the state: the publication of the Health (Amendment) Bill 2010
was, therefore, meant to respond to the HSEs intransigence. It was also reported that the
Ombudsman and Information Commissioner (O&IC) and OfC were both finding their
work hampered by the excess of legalism in the HSE (HSE failure to produce records
of deaths bizarre, Irish Times, 28 May 2010: 7). In an unprecedented intervention, the
O&IC charged the HSE with ill-founded legalism matched only by a lack of common
sense (see also OReilly, 2010: 13).

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Revealing the inadequacy of information retrieval systems across the HSE, which had
not been satisfactorily addressed during the so-called Celtic Tiger period, a senior manager in the agency stated that assembling numbers on the deaths of children was difficult
because it involved checking manual records and relying on the local knowledge of social
workers (HSE to give number of child deaths in State Care, Irish Times, 28 May 2010:
7). At length, however, the HSE announced that 37 children had died in state care in the
10 years from 1 Jan 2000 to 30 April 2010 that is to say, a 60 per cent increase on
figures it had previously provided: 18 of these deaths were attributable to what were
termed unnatural causes. At the time, the Minister for Children remained critical of the
HSE for having taken ten weeks to hand over the figures he requested in March.
Furthermore, the HSE was still to provide information on deaths related to children
known to (or in contact with) the HSE (37 children died in State care in 10 years, Irish
Times, 29 May 2010: 8). It was later announced that at least 188 young people who were
in care or in contact with social services have died over the past decade. This new figure
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 receiving after-care services. However, a
senior HSE official said the number could rise still further if social work teams around
the country found evidence of further deaths (Child deaths in care or in contact with
services now at 188, Irish Times, 5 June 2010: 1). Even in terms of the figures produced, it was startling that the numbers of dead children and young people had escalated from 20, to 23, to 37 to 188 in the space of a few weeks. In December 2010, it was
revealed that the number of dead children had risen to 199, 11 more than was announced
by the HSE in June (HSE revises figures for deaths of children, Irish Times, 9 December
2010: 3).
The Republic of Ireland is not the only country encountering difficulties in maintaining a robust system of child welfare and child protection; but the way in which the
problem is emerging is clearly nationally specific and needs to be located conjuncturally and in relation to other developments within the troubled jurisdiction. The dominant official narrative maintains that a measure of reform is urgently required.
Often such ideas are heavily influenced by reforms introduced in England during the
New Labour period: for example, the Every Child Matters agenda (Chief Secretary to
the Treasury, 2003) and the notion that child welfare services can be transformed by
new systems of e-working (see also Garrett, 2009). Elsewhere, there is a tendency to
echo keywords derived from the discourse of reform across the Irish Sea (see also
Williams, 1983; Bennett et al., 2005). For example, it has been argued that the current pressures experienced by the Health Service Executive could be addressed through
partnerships with all concerned with children and families (Dolan, 2010: 16, emphasis
added). There has also been a more recent tendency, often related to the involvement
of US-based private philanthropic organisations, to focus on early intervention in the
lives of children. Clearly, such attempts to reform a ramshackle and chaotic system of
child welfare and child protection may impact in favourable ways. However, these
approaches are largely inadequate because they fail to recognise how the state has functioned in the Republic of Ireland. This paper suggests that in order to better understand the evident and serious problems in child welfare and child protection, it is vital
to analyse historical and contemporary state practices and the patterning of economic

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and social relations within a hexagonal state formation. More fundamentally, it will be
impossible to truly reform the dysfunctional system of child welfare and child protection
within the Republic of Ireland without an extensive and embracing political project of
state transformation.

Conclusion
The Ryan Report was published at a time when there was an encompassing crisis rippling through the six dimensions of the state. Indeed, one by one, the traditional
pillars that held institutional life together appeared to be torn down, with sources of
established authority being left debased (Byrne, 2009b: 13). Subsequently, of course,
the economic situation for many has deteriorated immeasurably, and confidence in
traditional sources of authority has continued to ebb. In Spring 2010, a survey of public opinion revealed that the impact of the Ryan and Murphy reports could be seen in
a sharp rise in the level of distrust in the Church. The number of people who did not
trust the Church at all rose from 6 per cent in 2001 to nearly a third (32 per cent)
in 2010. Those who trusted the Church a great deal fell from 18 per cent in 2001 to
4 per cent. The erosion of trust in the government was almost as dramatic, with nearly
half the public (44 per cent) saying they did not trust it to be honest and fair at all
compared to 30 per cent in 2004, and 9 per cent in 2001. Similarly, the number of
people who did not trust the banks at all was up from 9 per cent at the height of the
boom in 2006 to 41 per cent in 2010. Those who distrusted the health service rose
from 19 per cent in 2001 to 41 per cent in 2010 (Most people no longer trust church,
Government or banks, The Irish Times, 29 April, 2010: 3). The defeat of Fianna Fil
in the general election is a further indicator of this loss of confidence in elites and elite
institutions.
Referring specifically to the international financial meltdown, Zizek (2008) maintains that the future now all depends on how it will be symbolised, on what ideological
interpretation or story will impose itself and determine the general perception of the
crisis. When the normal run of things is traumatically interrupted, the field is open for
a discursive ideological competition [and consequently] the main task of the ruling
ideology in the present crisis is to impose a narrative. An attempt to impose an ideological interpretation or story and to forge an acceptable narrative was made in spring
2011 with the publication of the Nyberg Report, which had been invited by the previous Fianna Fil administration. The Finnish financial expert gently chided a number of
banks because governance had fallen short of best practice. More significantly, the
Report attempted to spread the blame for the current crisis across Irish society on
account of a national speculative mania centred on the property market. As in most
manias, those caught up in it could believe and have trust in extraordinary things, such
as unlimited real wealth from selling property to each other on credit. Moreover, the
extent to which large parts of Irish society were willing to let the good times roll on
until the very last minute may have been exceptional (Commission of Investigation
into the Banking Sector in Ireland, 2011: iv; i). Whilst crudely disregarding the fact
that many, such as those in contact with social workers discussed earlier, did not let the
good times roll, this narrative of collective responsibility entirely meshes with one of
the core, and duplicitous, rhetorical tropes of national elites: the idea that all must be

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now be prepared to share the pain and take a hit in terms of attacks on jobs, salaries
and services.
At present, however, there are few indications of ideological struggle. In the Republic
of Ireland, there are no recent traditions of struggle comparable to those of Greece and
Portugal to be drawn upon (Finn, 2011a: 35). As mentioned, the potential combativeness
of the trade union movement has been undermined by the years of partnership. Now
that the Labour Party is in government, the trade union leadership will be even more
reluctant to organise mass mobilisations. Given this context, it is not unlikely that a much
more retrogressive hegemonic settlement may evolve. If this occurs, although the Church
is unlikely to perform the role it did prior to the abuse scandals, the six-sided state is likely
to have its harshest components consolidated. However, along with the politically ambiguous Sinn Fin, a number of newly elected independent members of the Dil a handful
of them members of a United Left Alliance may provide a prompt for wider and even
re-energised political opposition involving trade unionists now seeking to break free of the
partnership mindset and the beckoning decades of grim austerity.
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this article was presented as a paper at the Joint Nordic Conference on Welfare
and Professionalism in Turbulent Times, in Reykjavik, Iceland, 11-13 August, 2011. Valeria
Ballarotti provided invaluable suggestions on all aspects of this piece.

Endnotes
1. In December 2011, reports on six other dioceses by the Churchs own child protection body,
the National Board for Safeguarding Children, were published.
2. The Health Service Executive (HSE) is a quasi-governmental organisation that operates at
arms-length from the elected government and minister with responsibility for health and
related services. The setting up of such an agency is a typical neoliberal measure that serves to
dilute democratic accountability, whilst also facilitating further privatisation.
3. The current government is to place Children First on a statutory footing. More controversially,
under a measure contained in the Criminal Justice Withholding Information on Crimes and
against Children and Vulnerable Persons Bill, it is to become mandatory for organisations and
individuals to report instances of possible child abuse. The coalition administration is also
intent on establishing a new Child and Family Support Agency that will be separate from the
HSE. It is likely to be established in 2013.

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Author biography
Paul Michael Garrett is the author of three books critically examining social work/
social policy relating to children and families: Remaking Social Work with Children and
Families (Routledge, 2003); Social Work with Irish Children and Families in Britain
(Policy Press, 2004); and Transforming Childrens Services? Social Work, Neoliberalism and
the Modern World (Open University/McGraw Hill, 2009). He is a member of the editorial boards of Critical Social Policy (where he edits the book reviews) and the European
Journal of Social Work, and is a consulting editor for the US-based Journal of Progressive
Human Services.

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