CAMPAIGNER'S ROLE:A RELIGIOUS campaigner who is alleged to have supported the parents of the six children at the centre of the Roscommon abuse case did not respond to media queries yesterday.
A court heard last year that a “Catholic right-wing organisation” helped the parents secure a High Court injunction in 2000 to prevent the children being taken into care.
During this case, a childcare manager at the HSE separately told the court he had been contacted by a woman called Mina Bean Uí Chroibín around the time of the application.
She had said the family needed support rather than intrusive action by the health board.
The childcare manager said he had no evidence that she was involved in the application, but he suspected it.
Yesterday, associates of Bean Uí Chroibín said she was not available to comment on whether she had intervened in attempts by the health board to have the children at the centre of the Roscommon case taken into care.
She has previously insisted she had no involvement in the mother’s legal battles and that her name should not have been brought up in court.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Bean Uí Chroibín was a high-profile activist and campaigned against what she once described as the “deliberate destruction of the Irish Catholic Church”.
In 1994, she insisted the Scoil Paipin Naofa school, housed on lands owned by her, only teach the traditional Catholicism of the Tridentine faith.
The dispute over religious education saw parents remove their children from the all-Irish primary school and Bean Uí Chroibín clashed with the Archbishop’s office after she allegedly banned diocesan advisers and authorities from becoming involved with the school.
In another incident four years later, she was one of a group of protesters who disrupted a meeting at a school in Trim, Co Meath, where parents were being given details of a new relationship and sexuality programme to be taught to primary schoolchildren.
The Roscommon report published this week by the HSE does not include any names, but it does refer to a “Ms B” who contacted the Garda shortly after the High Court injunction was secured in October 2000.
This woman told the Garda that anyone who attended a case conference relating to the family would be in breach of the High Court order. She said she was a teacher and that the family had stayed with her the night before attending the High Court case.
In her interview with the Roscommon inquiry team, the mother of the children confirmed that the family had received help from a group that had some local representatives and had been involved in assisting the family with the High Court action.
“They got together with me and persuaded me differently,” the mother told the inquiry team.
In response to a question as to whether the court intervention helped the children, the mother replied: “No, I should have kept to the plan [shared parenting]”.
Ms B also wrote to the then minister for children asking that she write to the Western Health Board telling them to stop “persecuting” the family. The minister later responded that the department had inquiries made on behalf of Ms B and advised that it would be inappropriate to comment on an individual case.
The report says Ms B was also present in court, along with other supporters, in 2001 when the health board made another application for supervision orders in respect of the six children. This application was adjourned on a number of occasions.
A childcare manager also told the inquiry that he received a letter, dated August 10th, 2001 from Ms B, describing how workers from her organisation would help the family and indicating that she had local workers involved.
She asked that the Western Health Board withdraw all of their workers for six months to “allow the children forget the threat of removal”.
