HSE to provide data on child deaths

FACTUAL INFORMATION will be provided by the Health Service Executive (HSE) to the independent review group on child deaths by tomorrow to allow it to get on with its work, Taoiseach Brian Cowen has told the Dáil.

He rejected Opposition claims that existing legislation could be used to override the HSE’s refusal to hand over files to the group about children who died in State care. Mr Cowen insisted that emergency legislation was needed for the release of files from the HSE.

It would come before the Dáil in the next few weeks and it “is the intention” to have it passed before the summer recess.

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said that under the NTMA Amendment Act 2000, the HSE was obliged to pass on information about “adverse incidents” to the clinical indemnity scheme.

Mr Kenny said the Taoiseach “should have been able to inform the House” of the numbers of children who have died in State care since 2000 because that information would have been transmitted to the clinical indemnity scheme.

Mr Cowen said, however, that the indemnity scheme related to “adverse incidents in hospitals where clinicians are involved” while “the issues we are dealing with here relate to childcare legislation”. They are “totally different”, he said.

Labour leader Eamon Gilmore asked, “Why is the Government still not in a position to say how many children died in the care of the State over the last 10 years?” He referred to a Sunday newspaper report that up to 200 children might have died and, while he would be surprised by that, he was equally surprised that since Sunday, “I have not heard anyone in the HSE or in Government, challenging the figure 200.”

He also said that if the group’s members Norah Gibbons and Geoffrey Shannon were appointed to investigate under the Commissions of Investigation Act 2004, “there would be no necessity for new legislation”. They could “simply go ahead and arrive whatever legal difficulties exist”.

The Taoiseach said that, under the Commissions of Investigation Act, “The procedure would probably take longer and be more costly than what we are suggesting at present. It would not bring as quick a solution as we are offering.”