Roderic O’Gorman, the former minister for children, has confirmed that he received a copy of the Grace report last July, but was unable to publish it in advance of last year’s general election.
He said all commission reports had to go to the attorney general’s office for legal vetting and to the department involved for any policy implications.
He defended his decision not to publish the much-criticised report by senior counsel Marjorie Farrelly, stating it was mid-October before it would have been ready for release.
“Of course I was minded to publish it. We were within the general election period at that stage. Having been involved in the publication of a commission of investigation report before, I didn’t think it would be right to put something out like that in the middle of the general election campaign,” he said.
He also said it would not have been appropriate to have put it out after the November election either as he was only acting minister for children at the time.
When pressed on the contents of the report, he said he understood the frustration of Grace’s family at the delay in the publication of the report.
“I can understand their disappointment in terms of the conclusion,” he also said.
Speaking after being re-elected as Green Party leader, Mr O’Gorman said he had four meetings with Ms Farrelly, which were “business-like”, after responsibility for the commission of inquiry was handed over from the Department of Health to the Department of Children.
In the Dáil Fianna Fáil TD John McGuinness has warned the Government that it must ensure the Grace case was “fully dealt with”.
In renewed criticism of the Farrelly Commission report, the Carlow-Kilkenny TD said the Dáil had to answer “Are we going to allow this report to sit?” as he told Minister for Children Norma Foley: “You can’t walk away from this.”
Ms Foley confirmed the Government had taken the decision that there was no “clear basis for moving forward to a phase two” of the investigation.
Mr McGuinness, a long-time campaigner on the case, highlighted previous reports about Grace and 47 other children and said the commission should appear before the Oireachtas.
Grace is the pseudonym of the severely intellectually disabled, non-verbal woman who was left in an unvetted “foster” home when she was a child and remained there for 20 years despite parents of other children who had spent time in the home making allegations of sexual and physical abuse. She was removed in 2009 and, now aged 46, lives in a care facility.
Speaking during a debate on the commission’s report, Mr McGuinness said the other reports stated in a factual way “how the house was constructed, where these people lived – in outhouses. One child was kept under the stairs and was sexually abused. Another woman described how her daughter was sexually abused.
“She describes it like this, ‘She would take off her clothes. She would put herself into a position which was a sexualised position, and that would not have been done by a non-verbal, emotionally and mentally challenged person’.”
Representatives of Grace outlined how staff at her day centre would have to wash her because she arrived in a filthy state and incontinent.
She would put herself “into a sexualised position”, lying down with her legs apart.
“Are you going to ignore all of that? It’s not me saying it. It’s there in various reports by whistleblowers and by the staff within the HSE,” he said.
He said that “there’s so much wrong with this report and so much wrong with what the Government is suggesting that we now give it to somebody else. Dogs will bark and the caravan will move on”.
Ms Foley said the Farrelly Commission “confirmed its view that all steps were duly taken in considering submissions received, including those made on behalf of Grace”.
She received correspondence from the commission on Wednesday “stating that it had fully discharged its obligations”.
This follows the intervention by the General Solicitor for Minors and Wards of Court, Marie-Claire Butler, who said that extensive submissions made by lawyers representing Grace were not included or referred to in any way in its final report.
Ms Foley also said she would establish an “expert-driven, non-statutory safeguarding exercise” led by an “appropriate expert”.
The Farrelly Commission gathered 312,000 pages of evidence, but its almost-2,000 page report has no executive summary, index or unified pagination
It found no evidence that Grace suffered abuse, but found she experienced neglect and financial mismanagement.
