There had been an audible public outrage after news of the fire at the Hadfield Street Drop-In Centre managed by the state-run Child Care and Protection Agency and which claimed the lives of two young children. The intensity of the public response had been triggered by a fairly widespread knowledge that conditions at the Drop-In Centre had long reflected a sub-standard quality of care for children placed in the protection of the state. It seemed too, that there had also been a protracted official indifference to the need to place the improvement of that service higher up on the list of priorities.
By setting a time-frame of a matter of just three weeks for the completion of the Inquiry into the fire the President, it appeared had felt the icy chill of the public response to the tragedy and had judged, correctly, that this was not an issue that could be allowed to drag on.
There had long been a clutter of questions about conditions at the Drop-In Centre, not least its suitability to house children of the ages of those who died in the fire. Its substantive fire – safety regime had also been an issue.
Official enquiries can be selective pursuits and there was always the concern that those issues might not have been satisfactorily probed. Setting aside individual culpability the other equally burning question had to do with whether the quality of care provided by the Drop-In Centre was not, in fact, reflective of a broader official dereliction of duty on the part of the state itself.
The initial insights into the Inquiry would appear to point in the direction of both a lack of application of professional attention on the one hand, and a wider official neglect on the other; so that even if the issue as to whether those placed in charge of the Drop-In Centre were dutiful enough in the execution of their duties would now have to be addressed, the government must be mindful that recrimination not be seen to be the end-game. Simply placating public anger by ‘rolling heads’ is not the solution. There is a more weighty responsibility here and it is the state that must carry that responsibility.
Setting aside the revelation by Minister of State Joseph Harmon that the Inquiry pointed to “issues of bad policy arrangements for fire,” (the specifics of which deficiencies one expects will be detailed in the substantive report), Mr. Harmon is quoted in this newspaper as alluding to “not enough collaboration with entities” in the management of the Drop-In Centre. This assertion, vague as it is, points, it seems, to deficiencies in the management of the Centre that go beyond the institution itself.
Harmon, interestingly, also makes the wider point about the absence of mindfulness of fire codes and protocols and building standards at government facilities as a whole, a point that has been belaboured continually in the media without anything even remotely resembling a proper official response, over the years. Surely, we are at the appropriate juncture at which to take time to properly ventilate this fundamental problem.
In one particular respect the ball is entirely in the President’s court. He had said publicly that “if any persons are culpable of gross negligence or dereliction of duty, yes, we will make a judgement on whether they’re fit to hold those positions.” That, one assumes, can only mean one thing, though it is equally important that government, in this instance, ensure that the revelations contained in the Report constitute lessons learnt. In a society of short memories, where the next day brings with it new preoccupations and where yesterday’s concerns disappear like chaff in the wind we need, in this instance, to go beyond recrimination and move in the direction of holistic solutions that hold the feet of government far more firmly to the fire. As was mentioned earlier, we need to get beyond the ‘heads will roll’ discourse quickly and arrive at the point of significantly raising the quality of care offered the nation’s vulnerable children. That is what is most needed at a time when it appears that increasing numbers of children are in need of better support than their present circumstances afford.
