Sentencing the mother-of-six last week to seven years in jail at Roscommon Circuit Court, Judge Miriam Reynolds said the children “were failed by everyone around them”.

She said she was concerned the former Western Health Board had been involved with the family since 1996, but the children had not been taken into care until 2004. She pointed out that the children had gone to school with head lice crawling down their faces.

Laverne McGuinness, the HSE’s national director of primary, continuing and community care, admitted some social workers have “very heavy case loads”, handling up to 80 cases at a time.

Speaking on Jan 24, after the HSE announced what it termed an independent investigation into the management of the case from a care perspective, Ms McGuinness said:

"There is no doubt that these children have been let down badly by society. We - and all agencies - have to openly and honestly look at, with our current knowledge, what we did, examine the part we played and learn from that.

"We need to make sure that we do everything we can to ensure, in as much as is possible, that no other child has to face such an unspeakable tragedy ever again,” Ms McGuinness said in a statement.

She told RTÉ’s This Week that the inquiry would establish the things the health services did well, in addition to “what did we not do, how were we wrong, and where are the things that we should have done better”.

But Fine Gael and Labour questioned the independence of the investigation, while Alan Shatter, Fine Gael’s spokesman on children, said the make-up of the inquiry team made a mockery of the term independent.

He said its terms of reference were also “too narrow, grossly inadequate and tantamount to a cover-up”.

Labour’s health spokeswoman Jan O’Sullivan also said that if the inquiry were to be truly independent it should not have people from the HSE on it.

However, the HSE said in a statement that it was fully satisfied as to the integrity and independence of the investigation team. Their combined backgrounds “provided a significant legal and social work/childcare dimension”.  

Members of the inquiry team are:

• Chairperson Norah Gibbons,  Barnardos’ director of advocacy,
  
• Leonie Lunney, former CEO of Comhairle,
  
• Paul Harrison, national childcare specialist with the HSE
• Gerry O’Neill, a HSE national manager with specialist childcare responsibility.
  

Their report is to be made public. (Source: Irish Times)