Norma Foley is getting away with Murder

Figuratively. But in this case, almost literally.

You may have missed this – I confess I did, initially – but at the weekend there was another report of a barely believable failure by Tusla, the organisation funded to the tune of €1.47billion by our taxes to protect the welfare of children living in Ireland.

The details of the case, which are predictably horrific, can be read here. I’m linking RTE only because, whatever else its many flaws, it does not have a paywall.

If you don’t want to click, the basic gist is as follows: A husband abused his family and children for years by locking them up in a house in conditions that were so awful that, when Gardai finally entered the property, they had to pull out because of the smell.

Matters were brought to the attention of the Gardai after one of the children, a teenaged girl, tried to take her own life in school. Absent that act of attempted self-destruction, it is unlikely that the cops would have known to go and check the home.

You know who did know, though? Tusla.

The Child and Family agency had been aware of the family for – get this – twelve years. The family had been referred to Tusla in 2012, 2013, 2015, and most recently in 2019 by various concerned actors in the public sector who had encountered the family. When the mother – who was being abused by the husband – showed up to a meeting with Tusla, she was accompanied by the husband and told Tusla everything was fine.

And Tusla, naturally, said “grand so”. Between the first engagement and the present day, twelve years of abuse went on, and it went on despite four separate referrals to the state’s agency responsible for stopping this sort of thing.

And this is hardly an isolated historical failure: literally the day before this judgment was reported, HIQA published an inspection of Tusla’s North Dublin child protection service. Of the four national standards it examined, three were found to be non-compliant.

Now, of course, there’s a wonderful thing about Tusla. It’s the same wonderful thing that is true of the HSE. What is that?

It is the basic fact that Tusla does not really exist to protect children, so much as it exists to protect politicians from the consequences of failing children. If you’re reading the above and thinking “Tusla is a disgrace” then you are both correct, and also doing exactly what the architecture of Irish Child Protection is designed to make you do.

The Minister for Children, the person who sits atop this mess, is Norma Foley. Her name has not appeared in any coverage of this case that I can find.

Tusla’s budget - €1.47 billion – serves that purpose as well. Foley, as Minister, forks over the cash, appoints an “independent head” of Tusla, and then when the shit hits the fan, she can hide. When the agency screws up – as it does relentlessly – it is summoned to an Oireachtas com-mih-hee, where it gets the most ferocious dressing down.

Politicians call it a disgrace. Say things are shocking. Demand reform. And do fuck all.

That is how the system is designed to work.

Now, in its defence, the sheer repeated incompetence of Tusla given the money and resources it has remains astonishing. But when an organisation fails as often as it does, with the budget it has, an obvious explanation presents itself: That there is no incentive to be better.

If we want a working child and family agency, then put simply, the person in charge of it should be somebody likely to face real consequences for failure: It should be the Minister for Children herself.

Here’s what a google news alert for Minister Foley looks like, right now:

You’ll observe what’s not there: Nothing about Tusla or its failures. In Ireland, it is as if those who run the country are entirely disconnected from the things that happen in the country.

That is by careful design. And it is a design that needs to be unwound, before anything in Ireland can possibly get better than it is.