IF ANY single document of recent years should cause us shame as a people it is the report of the Independent Child Death Review Group led by Geoffrey Shannon and Norah Gibbons.
At almost 500 pages it is unlikely that very many people will have read it in full. But the detail is as meticulous as it is shocking. In its “Summary of Concerns” it lays bare an appalling catalogue of incompetence, dereliction, lack of professionalism and failure in duty.
In the decade from 2000 to 2010, 196 children died while in State care. Some deaths were due to illnesses. But 110 are ascribed to “non-natural causes”. These include drugs, suicide, fire, drowning, traffic accidents and homicide.
The responses from the political and administrative establishment were as expected. Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald had long flagged her personal intolerance of this cesspool. She will entrust childcare to a new Child and Family Support Agency and there will be a constitutional amendment on the rights of the child.
These measures may prove themselves in time. But they rather skirt around the reality that at the heart of this scandal there was a sizeable cohort of people who, for whatever reason, were simply not doing the jobs they were paid to do.
Shannon and Gibbons acknowledge that many individuals within the childcare system gave of their very best. But “good practice” was not evident in a majority of cases.
No doubt there can be pleas of overwork, poor leadership and inadequate resources within a dysfunctional Health Service Executive. But can any of these explain or excuse a widespread failure to discharge basic individual responsibilities and functions?
In case after case the report tells of failure to keep records, to hold case conferences, to notify the Garda of violent crimes. There is “no evidence of professional supervision” in many cases. In others there is “no care plan”. Basic documents such as birth certificates are missing from files. In other cases there was “no forward planning” and “no risk assessment”.
We are told “the system” failed. It seems we are reluctant to acknowledge that the “system” comprises identifiable people. We have a deep-seated national tradition of avoiding the apportionment of individual responsibility when things go wrong.
We prefer to speak of “failure of oversight” or “systemic inadequacies” rather than identifying individuals. So in reality, throughout much of the public service, people are simply not challenged on how well or otherwise they do their job.
If individuals are not meaningfully accountable – in the sense of facing sanctions for poor performance – the result invariably will be low standards and dereliction.
If we want it otherwise we require objective evaluation of performance for civil servants, social workers, teachers and others. This implies the imposition of real sanctions when performance falls short. And it implies that those in leadership and supervisory roles will have the moral courage to face down the non-performers.
This, of course, is anathema to our public service tradition.
A system of performance assessment introduced some years ago in the Civil Service was quickly discredited as it became clear that nothing short of absolute indolence would incur a poor rating.
Similarly, the system of performance-related bonuses for senior management quickly came to be seen as a guaranteed top-up to salary, regardless of how the job had been done.
Conversely, it is a fair bet that those whose performances have been so sharply indicted by Shannon and Gibbons are still drawing just as much in pay and allowances as those who have delivered “good practice”. There may be reasons for this particularly Irish reluctance to insist that people deliver on the responsibilities they are paid for.
The legalism, inherited from the Ministers and Secretaries Act 1924, that all actions by a public servant are those of the Minister is an anachronism. It suits the politicians to be able to take credit for positive achievements. But it facilitates incompetence and obscures the chain of de facto responsibility.
Representative associations and trade unions have always resisted the notion that individual members should be made accountable for their professional performance. The teachers’ unions, for example, have held this line with stunning success over the decades. Nobody ever underperforms. It is always the “system’s” fault.
It may have something to do with the small-scale connectedness of Irish society and the hypersensitivity of the electoral system. Politicians have always been terrified of taking on the big power blocs of teachers, guards, civil servants and so on.
Remarkably, one of the rare instances of people taking responsibility for their actions, at least at intermediate level, has been at RTÉ in the wake of the Fr Kevin Reynolds affair. The “system” broke down. But certain people emerged with sufficient honesty to recognise that they are “the system” – or part of it.
There are many superb people in our front-line services. But there are also people who are a lot less than superb. There are so-called strategists who have no strategic capacity. There are clock-watchers and time-servers who know every trick in maximising their drawings and minimising their input. There are workers who do little work. There are managers who do not and probably cannot manage.
But the “system” rarely differentiates between those who are actually delivering and those who are swinging the lead. And it hardly ever applies sanctions against the latter group.
One is not arguing against the proposed reforms announced in response to this shocking report. But they are unlikely to herald a new dawn without an insistence that people at all levels deliver on the jobs they are paid to do and that they are provided with competent leadership and management in doing them.
Frances Fitzgerald’s new agency has to have the capacity to insist on universally high professional standards among its employees at all levels. And it has to be armed so that it can sanction those who fail to perform.
If this does not happen, nothing will change. Slovenliness and dereliction will continue as the norm.
Conor Brady is a former editor of The Irish Times.