Those who oppose mandatory reporting by teachers, doctors and others of suspected child abuse will see the McColgan report as providing convincing evidence for their case.
They will point out that many people knew what was happening to the McColgan children nearly two decades ago, but that senior health board management failed to act effectively.
Reporting that abuse is going on, they argue, will not necessarily result in action.
Teachers and field social workers tried hard to get help for the McColgan children but, at key times, the senior social worker and the director of community care failed to convene a case conference "to share information, assess risk, make decisions and plan a strategy for protection".
Those who favour mandatory reporting would counter-argue that children are entitled to have suspicions of abuse reported to the health board.
If health boards fail to deal effectively with this information, then action should be taken to change that response.
One of the main concerns of the inquiry team was that many people had information about the children but that this was never put together in its totality.
A main theme of the recommendations is the need to prevent this from happening in the future.
Essentially, the report recommends that what it calls "the totality of contacts" between children at risk and the whole child-protection system be noted and this information be given to case conferences.
One of the great difficulties social workers encountered in the McColgan case was the insistence of the father on being present when the children were being interviewed.
His presence was meant to intimidate the children and did so.
Despite subsequent improvements in legislation, the report points out, there are still issues to be resolved about the right of professionals to interview children without parents being present.
Mr Frank Fahey, the Minister of State for Children, last night said he had asked his Department to examine the issue as a matter of urgency.
"The welfare of the child must always be our paramount concern," he said.
But Mr Kieran McGrath, editor of the Irish Social Worker, warned against removing the right of parents to be present at interviews.
"It would be a bad decision if children could be interviewed without their parents present without at the very least making great efforts to get parental consent," he said.
At present a court can order that a child be examined and assessed against the parents' wishes, he said.
Mr McGrath praised the health board for accepting that it had failed to protect the McColgan children. This was in marked contrast to the approach taken by its insurers in the legal action which was settled in January this year following a protracted court case.
The ISPCC last night said the publication of the report represented "the first time that an inquiry or review has openly acknowledged clear system failure to protect children in a child abuse case." The view that such a failure would not happen now is "hard to sustain, dangerously optimistic and naive," it said.
