SOCIAL WORKERS in Co Wexford who work with children and families at risk have some of the heaviest case loads in the State, new figures show.
The extent of the pressure on child protection teams in the county comes just days after the Monageer report into the deaths of the Dunne family highlighted serious flaws in the handling of the case.
Information compiled by the Health Service Executive (HSE) also shows the county has one of the highest rates of unallocated cases of suspected child neglect or abuse.
The figures are contained in a social work and family support survey conducted by the HSE and commissioned by the Minister of State for Children. The unpublished report was finalised last month.
It shows that in December of last year the average social worker had a total of 31 cases at any time, the fourth highest figure out of a total of 32 local health offices across the State.
In addition, some 43 per cent of all cases of suspected abuse or neglect had not been allocated a social worker, the third highest in the country.
The Monageer inquiry report pointed to a number of failures across the social work system in the handling of the Dunne case, such as communication problems within the HSE and a failure by health or social work professionals to identify the family as requiring “special attention”.
However, the inquiry team also concluded that even if social services or gardaí had intervened on the weekend of their deaths, it is unlikely the tragedy would have been averted.
Yesterday Fine Gael challenged this conclusion, claiming that a simple assessment would have identified the family as being at risk.
Dan Neville TD, who is also president of the Irish Association of Suicidology, said that it should have been clear to health authorities that the father of the Dunne family was in need of urgent intervention.
“The psychiatric services should have been immediately engaged and all the services available to save his life should be engaged. If this were so he and his family could have been saved,” Mr Neville said.
The office of the coroner for north Co Wexford, meanwhile, has confirmed that inquests into the deaths of the Dunne family will take place on May 21st.
The family of Ciara Dunne intends to respond to the report following the inquest. Her parents, PJ and Marian O’Brien, will travel with other relatives and their solicitor from their home in Burt, Co Donegal, to Wexford for the inquest next Thursday, according to Dr James McDaid, TD, a friend of the family.
Dr McDaid said he agreed with the report’s findings that nothing could have stopped Adrian Dunne fulfilling his plan to kill Ciara and their children, five-year-old Leanne and three-year-old Shania, and then take his own life.
He told Highland Radio: “If James McDaid, or the pope or Ian Paisley or the queen of England had arrived one after the other at hourly intervals that morning at that particular house and each of us had questioned him, he still would have succeeded in what he was going to do.”
