Menu
Ireland's political and cultural magazine
— June – July 2013
T
HE already precarious social and economic position of children
was aggravated as wages coming into the family disappeared
during the Lockout and dependence on food handouts deep-
ened. Children over the age of would normally have been
seeking work or working. Their situation deteriorated, as they were
among those locked out.
The scheme to relieve the hardship of the children of those locked
out by bringing them to stay in the homes of trade unionists in Britain
caused a furore. The authority of James Larkin, the leader on the union
side, who had agreed to and supported the scheme, was damaged as a
result. The interests of the children were not of concern within the wider
battles being fought by employers and Catholic Church.
Dora Montefiori, a British socialist and campaigner for women’s rights,
proposed the scheme. In doing so she was reflecting a practice that had
already been used in other prolonged strikes in Britain, Belgium and
the USA.
The newspapers owned by William Martin Murphy, the leader on the
employer side, denounced the initiative with venom. They depicted it as
an attempt by godless socialists to kidnap Irish children to be indoctri-
nated into alien faiths. The newspapers subsequently published the names
and addresses of any parents who sent their children to England.
There already was tension between the Catholic and Protestant
churches over children. The Irish Church Missions was still actively pros-
elytising among Catholics in Dublin. They paid working-class families
to give over their children to be cared for in Protestant orphanages. The
Society of the St Vincent de Paul was characteristically feisty in subvert-
ing this.
The reaction of the Catholic Church to Montefiori’s scheme was
aggressive. The clergy in Dublin were already opposed to the unions
and supportive of the employers. They charged that the children would
be subject to Protestant or atheist influences once brought to Britain.
Members of the clergy organised groups to stop people boarding trains
or boats with children. If these people could not prove the children were
their own, they were not allowed to board.
After the Lockout Archbishop William Walsh gave his reasons for
opposing the scheme. One reason was that children would have unreal-
istic expectations after spending time in Britain. They would not have
fitted back into the slums of Dublin. Only a small number of children
was sent to England.
It would appear that they had a good experience. Children were mere
pawns in a wider struggle.
The centenary of the Lockout challenges us to look to the experience
of children today. Without doubt their situation has improved. However,
it is equally clear their status has not improved in step.
Children featured prominently in one of the most controversial fracas of
the 1913 Dublin Lockout . Tellingly the actual children’s interests were
instrumental, not really a matter of concern for the grown-ups and their
politicking. One hundred years later, has anything changed in the status
of children in Ireland, asks Niall Crowley, commissioning editor of this
Lockout special [one of a series]
Scandal of child
neglect goes beyond
delinquent crèches
C
H
I
L
D
R
E
N
L
O
C
K
O
U
T
SPECIAL
S
HE is twenty now and has been offered a place in
College. She never had any aftercare support from the
HSE but she will not be entitled to any support from
them once she is twenty-one. EPIC (Empowering
Children in Care) is advocating on Nelly’s behalf, and sup-
porting her to develop the skills to advocate for herself, so that
an aftercare plan and financial package are put in place before
she is twenty-one so she can take up this College place.
Children and young people in, and leaving, the care sys-
tem experience many adversities. There is a responsibility
on the state, acting in loco parentis, to provide the best pos-
sible care and put children at the centre of the care system.
More often than not the needs of the system are prioritised
over the needs of the child.
Children in care should have the right to have their
concerns and voices heard. The voices of children should
contribute to change in the care system such that their best
interests are placed firmly at the centre of all decision-mak-
ing affecting their lives.
There have been numerous reports cataloguing the fail-
ures of the state to protect children. These include the Ryan Report, the
Roscommon report and the Child Death Review. A recurring theme is the
invisibility of the child and the absence of the child’s voice.
EPIC (formerly IAYPIC) is an independent association that works
throughout the Republic of Ireland, with and for children and young
people who are currently living in care or who have had an experience of
living in care. This includes those in residential care, foster care, hostel,
high support & special care. EPIC also works with young people prepar-
ing to leave care and in aftercare. EPIC has been set up to:
l Give a voice to what young people with care experience are saying
l Explain the rights of young people in care
l Give information, advice and support to young people with care
experience
l
Help people who work with young people in care to involve them more
when decisions are being made about them.
The most common problem concerns where children are living -
that their placement is not appropriate. Children are increasingly being
moved or placed on the basis of cost rather than of need. Concerns relat-
ing to care and aftercare planning are also raised by young people. Not
having a plan for the future, especially when nearing the age of eighteen,
is stressful. It can also limit opportunities to review their progress and
identify any difficulties at an early stage.
Through advocacy, children should secure greater access to siblings
and family, access to services, accommodation, education, and aftercare
support. Advocacy should also contribute to policy and practice change
and foster a cultural change towards a more child- centred, children’s-
rights-based approach within the care system.
There are challenges to ensure the voice of children and young people
is heard in the care system. The right of children to be heard is not read-
ily accepted across Irish society and in all sectors of our public services.
The culture within the care system has to be changed. The resistance to
children’s participation must be broken.
There are challenges too in ensuring every child in care knows about
and can easily get access to EPIC’s advocacy service. This is particularly
difficult for children in foster care, and care of relatives. EPIC depends
on HSE social workers to reach these children.
There have been positive developments including the establish-
ment of the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, the passing of
the Children’s Rights Amendment and the decision to establish the new
Child and Family Agency. This offers hope for the future. Children need
to be inspired by the possibilities of the future and not be limited by the
experiences of the past. They need advocacy to this end.
Jennifer Gargan is Director of EPIC, www.epiconline.ie, tel 01 872 7661
“Nelly” was abused by a family member and a family friend from the age
of four. She was self-harming at the age of fifteen. She disclosed what had
happened to her teacher and she was taken into care by the HSE. She was
in a number of different placements, including for several months in an
adult psychiatric hospital. When she reached eighteen she moved into an
apartment on her own. “Nelly” struggled to cope, ended up homeless for
a while and eventually had nowhere to go but home. Following a near fatal
drug overdose, she received drug rehabilitation treatment and got her life
back on track, writes Jennifer Gargan, Director of EPIC (Empowering
Children in Care)
A crowd mostly of children in Dublin’s docks awaits arrival of the rst food ship
from England, 28 Sept 1913. UCC multitext project.
— June – July 2013
I
RELAND was a very different place for children when the Dublin
Lockout took place. In , children’s very survival was at stake
with high mortality rates. Children’s development was limited by very
poor health and education outcomes. Apart from constant threats
to their wellbeing from the social and economic conditions of the time,
this was a time when children’s value as individuals of equal worth with
adults was little appreciated. Some of this is evident in the use of children
as pawns during the Dublin Lockout.
Internationally, it was the League of Nations that led the way in chil-
dren’s rights, with the adoption of the Declaration of the Rights of the
Child in . This pre-dated the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human
Rights by years and was drafted by Eglantyne Jebb (the British cam-
paigner who founded Save the Children). It was followed in by a
second Declaration, led by Eleanor Roosevelt, which was noteworthy in
using the language of rights to express children’s needs.
The Declaration formally acknowledged children’s right to spe-
cial protection, health, education and protection from exploitation and
discrimination. Significantly, the Declaration recognised the right of the
child to family-based care. It introduced the concept of the ‘best interests
of the child’ that aims to secure a child-focused approach to decision-
making for children. This still
dominates the law of families.
In , the international
community embraced a legally-
binding comprehensive treaty
setting out the rights of children.
The Convention on the Rights of
the Child has forty-two detailed
provisions. It is defined by its
recognition of children as indi-
viduals, worthy of respect in
their own right, with standing as
rights-holders and a right to equal
protection. This is best captured
in the requirement that all actions
concerning children should focus
on their interests and be informed
by what children themselves have
to say.
The Convention reflects that
children’s rights are not just the
concern of their parents or car-
ers, but are, like all human rights,
the concern of states and their
Governments. In this way, the Convention, which Ireland has a legal
obligation to implement, marks a definitive move from the treatment of
children as vulnerable citizens in need of protection, to those with rights-
claims that (notwithstanding children’s limited capacity) the state has a
duty to vindicate.
In the Ireland of , advances in mortality rates and the quality of
education and healthcare systems, notwithstanding some serious prob-
lems, have improved children’s chances of having happy, healthy and
fulfilling lives. By other indicators, however, it is not clear that Ireland’s
progress has kept up with the international development of children’s
rights obligations. It does not appear that Ireland has moved from its
paternalistic approach towards children to an approach that recognises
the individual worth of all children and their entitlement to treatment
with respect and dignity, care and protection.
Research conducted for the Ombudsman for Children has found that
children are largely invisible in law and policy as well as in administra-
tive decision-making that affects them. The absence of mechanisms to
child-proof law, policy and budgets means that those making decisions
about children are not obliged to consider their rights, interests or views.
Limited structures to co-ordinate the implementation of children’s rights
across government departments and agencies mean that children regularly
fall through the cracks. Recent improvements, like the establishment of
the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, are very welcome and there
have been particular achievements in child participation initiatives and
children’s research. But, to date little progress has been made in the main-
streaming of respect for children’s rights across all Government activity.
The state of child law in Ireland is another important barometer of
our attitude to children. Irish constitutional law, for example, articulates
education as a right and duty of parents, rather than as a right of the child.
This has had a significant influence on the Education Act , the major
statute in this area. The legislation was a negotiated compromise between
the state, teachers’ unions and school patrons. As a result, it makes few
references to children, focusing instead on the entitlements and respon-
sibilities of the state (schools) and parents. It makes no provision for the
rights of children in schools. Although many schools operate according to
child rights standards, by being inclusive and involving students in deci-
sion-making for example, this is not a legislative requirement.
The many shortcomings of the state system in child protection are well
documented. Although efforts are being made to address serious problems
in institutional practice, there is no attempt at reforming the legislative
framework that wraps around existing Constitutional provision. The ‘best
interests’ principle, for example, a core principle that aims to secure child-
focused decision-making, applies only where it does not conflict with the
rights of parents. Although the Child Care Act makes some provi-
sion for the right of children to have a say in judicial proceedings, the lack
of infrastructure to enable this to happen frustrates the realisation of this
objective in practice.
The fact that Irish law does not expressly provide for every child’s right
to care and protection, to family-based care, to regular reviews of the
child’s progress when in the care of the state, and to the child’s involvement
in those reviews illustrates the lack of a child-rights focus. A separate, but
related shortcoming is our failure to prohibit physical punishment in the
home, as we have done in schools. This reluctance to guarantee rights to
zero tolerance of all forms of ill treatment of children, including physical
punishment, has been criticised by several international bodies.
Children’s treatment in the legal system has improved little in recent
decades. Children are rarely listened to by decision-makers when their par-
ents separate, notwithstanding their desire, need and right to be involved.
Child victims still suffer treatment that compounds the hurt caused by
abuse when they step forward to aid the prosecution of perpetrators.
Children’s interests, but not necessarily their rights,
have flourished since 1913, writes Ursula Kilkelly,
Director of the Child Law Clinic, Professor of Law and
Dean of the Faculty of Law, University College Cork
C
H
I
L
D
R
E
N
L
O
C
K
O
U
T
SPECIAL
“
Irish constitutional
law, for example,
articulates
education as a
right and duty of
parents, rather than
as a right of the
child. This has had a
signicant inuence
on the Education Act
1998
Children continue to be detained in St Patrick’s Institution where they can-
not be kept safe, constituting multiple breaches of Ireland’s international
commitments. The inability to provide care for children with specialist
needs continues to result in them being sent abroad for treatment. The
experience of asylum-seeking children in direct-provision centres shows
how unequal our commitment is to ensuring that all vulnerable children’s
needs are met. The failure to provide a modern framework for children’s
involvement in healthcare decision-making means that progress in this
area is limited to pockets of good practice.
The recent constitutional amendment on children’s rights is construed
as evidence of sweeping change in attitude and legal provision. Article
A does mark progress, especially in its recognition of all children as
rights-holders and the state as ultimate duty bearer, with some scope for
litigating to secure better treatment for children. If the duty to incorpo-
rate the best-interests principle and the right to be heard into legislation
on adoption, child protection and private family law is implemented in
a robust and expansive manner, then the treatment of children in the
judicial system should improve.
Regrettably, the Constitutional amendment offers little direction to
administrative decision-making – which is where the vast majority of deci-
sions are made affecting children’s lives. The same holds true for other
areas like healthcare and education outside the scope of its provision. It
is not clear where the impetus for reform can come from in these areas.
More generally, the very poor turnout (.%) in the referendum and
the marginal success of the ‘Yes’ campaign (%), which had cross-party
support and the weight of Ireland’s large children’s sector behind it, are
worrying signs for the acceptance of children’s rights in Ireland.
No single country has a perfect record on children’s rights but there
are many, in Europe and elsewhere, which have committed to the highest
standards of rights protection, by giving children’s rights the full effect
of constitutional law and legislation. These countries are associated with
good public awareness of children’s rights and with a positive attitude to
children that extends beyond a heartfelt concern for their own children
to a commitment to the protection of children’s rights, in general.
