HSE - PAC

PAC to Seek Full Explanation from HSE on Wrong Figures for Deaths of Children in Care


9th June 2010

A senior official from the HSE will be asked for a correct account of the number of children who have died in State care following erroneous information provided to the Committee at a meeting last March.

At that meeting, Ms Laverne McGuinness, HSE Director for Primary, Community and Continuing Care told the Committee that during the last ten years, twenty children had died in the care of the State. This figure has subsequently shown to be significantly higher and the Committee wants full and proper details on this sensitive topic and wants to know why incorrect information was given in the first place.

Ms. McGuinness will appear at tomorrow’s (10th) meeting at 10 am in Committee Room 1 of Leinster House.

Committee Chairman, Bernard Allen TD said;
“The Committee takes a very dim view of inaccurate information being provided to members. Our Committee has a very important role in holding public officials to account and we cannot tolerate a situation where senior managers supply information which turns out to be totally inaccurate.

At a minimum we would have expected that the HSE would correct the information at the first opportunity. However, this did not happen which prompted a call by the Committee at last week’s meeting to recall officials from the HSE to give a correct account of this sensitive important issue.

As well as getting the true picture, we will be looking behind those figures to establish how a system can be run which does not have such information readily available. In this day and age, it makes a nonsense out of IT investment when basic information could not be readily collated and where we are told it’s because they were kept on paper files. The HSE needs to get its act together quickly on this and other issues.

There is a real issue here in that information was given to the Oireachtas which did not stand up to scrutiny and we will be asking what procedures are put in place to ensure that this does not happen again.