Adjusting ‘our notions of the nature of the State’: A political reading of Ireland’s child protection crisis

Abstract

The Republic of Ireland was the first country in the eurozone to adopt a neoliberal infused ‘austerity budget’, and the ill-judged state bailing out of a number of reckless banks and associated financial institutions is costing billions of euros. In late 2010, as the crisis deepened, the International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank provided a ‘bailout’ package that resulted in further punitive public spending cuts and the eradication of national sovereignty. This paper maintains that the present crisis is more than a mere economic crisis, but can be viewed as a series of interlinked ‘conjunctures’. Tracing the connection between the historical and the contemporary, the first part of the discussion will explore six thematic components relating to the structuring of the Irish state. These are identified as: a ‘class rule state’; an ‘authoritarian state’; a ‘confining state’; a ‘censoring state’; a ‘discriminatory state’; and a ‘state within the state’. These six dimensions provide a contextual underpinning for the second part of the paper, which focuses on the crisis in child welfare and child protection services and dwells on the shambolic performance of the Health Service Executive (HSE), deficits in the ‘care’ system and the HSE failure to furnish reliable data on the deaths of children in contact with social workers.

Social work and the politics of ‘austerity’: Ireland and Italy

“…Social work with children and families commands most political and media attention (Garrett, 2012). During 2010 the deaths of children and young people 'in care' and the failure of the HSE to produce robust and reliable data emerged as a key issue.…”

Social Workers and Social Justice During a Period of Intensive Neoliberalization: A Preliminary Investigation From the Republic of Ireland

“…The attempt to revitalize attentiveness to social justice is also reflected in the aspiration to create alternatives by thinking differently and doing things differently. This includes a willingness to talk about class politics and the role that the Irish State plays (Garrett, 2009(Garrett, , 2012. In short, the SWAN project pivots on the intention to render audible a left voice within social work that is prepared to strategically, but not stridently, challenge mainstream opinion on social work-related themes.…”

‘The children not counted’: reports on the deaths of children in the Republic of Ireland

“…More fundamentally, aside from hinting at a new administrative competence, the present government's approach remains thematically in tune with its predecessor and it is constrained by the same set of neoliberal policy imperatives (Garrett, 2012). Starkly, almost 20% of households with children are at risk of poverty and nearly 8% are living in consistent poverty (Children' Rights Alliance, 2013).…”

“…UK child poverty, although declining during the period of the New Labour governments, failed to even reach the levels it was at when Margaret Thatcher was elected in 1979. In 2010/11, UK child poverty was at 17% and is now projected to increase until at least 2020 (Therborn, 2013; see also Garrett, 2009). In local authorities in London, 'life in the poorest authority was 5 years shorter than in the richest at the beginning of the New Labour reign (in 1999-2001) and almost 9 years ... shorter towards the end of it (2006-8)' (Therborn, 2013: 111).…”