An investigation has revealed 65 cases where the State’s child protection agency, Tusla failed to protect vulnerable children.
The findings were published by the Health Information Quality Authority (Hiqa) and found those kids were at “potential risk” of abuse.
The State watchdog, Hiqa released a 300-page report detailing a number of problems interfering with Tusla’s duty to ensure vulnerable children are kept safe and to properly investigate historic abuse complaints.
Hiqa looked into Tulsa after it was revealed whistle-blower Maurice McCabe was incorrectly accused of abuse.
The inquiry was labelled as a “cop-out” because it didn't hold anyone responsible for the McCabe accusations, according to the Irish Examiner.
However, it has flagged a number of concerns over Ireland’s child protection system, which has now subjected Tusla HR to launch an internal investigation.
According to the report, Tusla failed to address 65 abuse cases despite concerns children were still at “potential risk.”
It also detailed that Tusla closed 164 suspected child sex abuse cases despite not knowing if the matter was resolved.
Lastly, it highlighted “defective points”, which brought to light issues such as safety plans for vulnerable children and referral problems that are leading to “child protection concerns”, and potentially a number of abusers are being “missed”.
Staff shortages was rejected as the reason for the shortcomings by Hiqa chief executive Phelim Quinn, at the report's launch.
Mr Quinn said it was concerning that, “a third party, had to come in and identify” the cases where there had been a possible risk to children, which wasn't acted on by the State group.
"Those deficits were definitely identified as a result of our audit," added Mr Quinn.
The chief executive said it was now ”very, very important” Tusla acts promptly on the findings.
Although Fred McBride, Tusla chief executive recognised the failings, he highlighted that the group are working to the best of their ability given the enormous amount of work and current problems they're facing with an out of date regional child safety monitoring system.
According to the Irish Examiner, when questioned about the 65 cases, Mr McBride said there are "some gaps."
However, he reiterated that “in the vast majority of cases we gave clear explanations as to why we did or didn’t do certain things.”
Additionally the report “did not say any of those children were directly harmed”, he added.
A number of child protection groups such as Barnardos and One in Four welcomed the results of the investigation.
They also gave their support for the proposed ideas to relieve Tusla from all duties of investigating historic sex abuse claims, by giving it to gardaí to manage.
