One of the country’s most senior civil servants has been criticised by the Ombudsman for Children over "inappropriate" comments about children in St Patrick's Institution.
Emily Logan claims the secretary general of the Department of Justice misrepresented a scathing report she carried out on 16- and 17-year-old inmates in the jail.
Ms Logan said she was dismayed Seán Aylward told a United Nations committee on torture that her report highlighted the “number of discrepancies between the young people’s perception and the actual reality”.
She described her own visits to St Patrick’s as a chilling experience. “I was concerned that the most senior civil service who oversees that service would say there was a discrepancy between young people’s perception and the reality,” she said.
The Ombudsman said officials should sit up and listen when children talked about being frightened and locked in a protective cell, called a pad, in their underwear for prolonged periods of time.
“I just want to make sure there isn’t a culture where children will express their views and that those views will be dismissed,” said Ms Logan. “I wouldn’t find that acceptable.”
Ms Logan said it had echoes of children who were not listened to when they were abused, but whose stories were listened to as adults in the Ferns, Murphy and Ryan reports.
“I’m not going accept that we can’t change things because there is a recession,” she warned. “There are plenty of things culturally we can change in terms of people’s
attitude to children and young people.”
Ms Logan’s office dealt with a record 1,233 complaints in 2010. Education accounted for 38 per cent of complaints, 37 per cent were health related, 8 per cent involved justice and 5 per cent were associated with housing.
Parents remain the best advocates for their children, with 75 per cent of complaints coming from family members, 10 per cent from professionals and 4 per cent from young people themselves.
In her annual report, Ms Logan revealed she also offered advice to Government Ministers on several pieces of legislation, but criticised how the rights of dependent children of same sex couples were excluded from the Civil Partnership Bill.
The Ombudsman said her report showed the need for public sector reform in relation to how the State supported children and families. “In this respect, the individual children appeared to be largely invisible in the decision-making process,” she said. “Areas that I believe are of serious concern are the excessively bureaucratic approach to decision-making by public administration, and the failure to ensure the implementation of national laws and policy.”
Speaking on RTÉ radio this morning, Ms Logan said decisions were being made about children that did not respect their rights.
“I’m concerned about the side-effects of the Cork Park reforms for example. We’re hearing this mantra that there isn’t any money and while there isn’t any money there are choices that can be made," she said.
“An example of a poor choice in education is the decision to cut resource teachers. Some 1,200 posts were cut but a disproportionate number of those posts were in Traveller education, 773 of those posts were people who teach children from the Travelling community. So while we’ve difficult choices to make – careful and informed choices need to be made instead of arbitrary decisions to slash and cut budgets by a certain percentage.
"Much more information gathering and child impact analysis needs to be carried out into what should be cut and how it should be cut. Decision making is not informed," she said.