Emily Should Watch Her Back, Padraig O'Morain, Herald, January 15, 2009

Emily Should Watch Her Back

By Padraig O'Morain
Herald
January 15, 2009

http://www.herald.ie/opinion/comment/emily-should-watch-her-back-1602511.html

BOLD: Emily Logan, pictured, and Emily O'Reilly fight the good fight

She is the country's first Ombudsman for Children. She has shown herself to be a fearless champion for the children whose interests she represents.

But now Emily Logan has taken on the big battalions, and you have to wonder if the knives will soon be out for her.

I hope she is entirely sane and that she has enough Machiavellian savvy to survive whatever will be thrown at her by those she has undoubtedly outraged.

What will enrage the big guys is her decision to investigate the HSE and the Department of Health in relation to child protection in the Catholic dioceses.

Nonsense

This is an extraordinary development and we're lucky to have this gutsy public servant monitoring what is happening to children.

You may recall that an audit of child protection in Catholic dioceses by the HSE ran into a major problem: none of the bishops would give even non-identifying information on how they had handled actual cases of alleged child abuse in their dioceses.

The bishops' refusal was based on legal concerns about confidentiality.

This all rendered the "audit" a bit of a nonsense but the HSE, bless it, went ahead with it anyway.

It gets worse. Back in 2006, when the audit was started, the bishops told the HSE that they wanted to give it the information it sought, but that legal difficulties prevented them.

They asked for legislation to enable them to do so. They have asked for this a number of times since then.

They already supply this information to the authorities in Northern Ireland, where the law is different, so it is reasonable to assume that they are being sincere.

The HSE promised to get back to them. But it didn't. Instead, it went ahead with a now-ridiculous audit that meant nothing.

It is in relation to this that Ms Logan wants to know if, as her announcement put it, "an action by the Department of Health and Children and/or the HSE in relation to the handling of the audit has or may have adversely affected a child".

An "action", she explains, is defined in the Ombudsman for Children Act "as a decision, failure to act or omission".

In other words, if you do nothing, that is still an "action" which she can investigate. Oh dear.

This example aside, does the HSE adversely affect children by acts of omission?

Well, yes.

We already know that people who report suspected child abuse to social workers can be ignored for weeks or months. We know that the HSE often does not return phone calls from concerned relatives.

How do we know? Because Emily Logan, Ombudsman for Children, reported it all to an Oireachtas committee three years ago.

Needless to say, nothing at all was done about this. Meanwhile, child protection services continue to fall apart and children's lives continue to be ruined.

Shafted

So last November, Emily Logan launched her own investigation into the child protection services.

That investigation got a frosty welcome from Minister for Children, Barry Andrews TD. Andrews deserves praise for standing up to the Church in the Cloyne affair, but I rather doubt if he welcomes Logan's latest move.

Not long ago, I expressed fears in this newspaper that our general Ombudsman, Emily O'Reilly, might find herself and her office shafted by officialdom for embarrassing official Ireland.

My fear now is that another Ombudsman, Emily Logan, might also be in danger.

It only takes a drastic cut in funding, a merger with a Government department or a decentralisation to somewhere daft to cut the legs from under these troublesome women.

If officialdom tries it on, it is up to all of us to rally behind them. They are on our side. They have displayed a rare courage.

If we had people like them in previous decades, we would have fewer scandals now. Good luck to them.

Contact: pomorain@herald.ie