TAOISEACH'S REACTION:TAOISEACH BRIAN Cowen has expressed sympathy to the children involved in the Roscommon abuse case and said there had been no constitutional hindrance to them being taken into care.
He said work was ongoing on preparations for a referendum on the rights of children, but gave no indication of when that work might be completed.
“First of all what has emerged in this case for the children concerned, it’s an appalling vista,” Mr Cowen told reporters as he arrived in Brussels for last night’s European summit.
“One has to sympathise and empathise with them and hope that they can recover from what has been a most traumatic experience. One would say that first of all as a parent,” he said.
“Secondly, I think it’s been made clear by those who were experts in this area that there was no constitutional hindrance to these children being taken into care.
“Obviously there was a problem in terms of how decisions were taken and whether they were justified in the circumstances and whether . . . various parts of the service had joined up and collaborated sufficiently to come to a different conclusion, clearly, than what they came to.”
Mr Cowen said he listened to a radio interview in which it was set out that “people were trying to deal with these matters within the home environment when clearly it wasn’t getting better, it was getting worse”.
Issues arising from the report had to be dealt with, he said, but added that a referendum on children’s rights was a separate issue.