Saturday June 13 2009
The Dail debate on the Ryan Report, like the Ryan Report itself, has many flaws and many shortcomings. As far as the Dail is concerned, the problems begin within Government, in the drafting of the motion, and they start at the very top, in the speech with which Brian Cowen opened proceedings on Thursday.
He said that the report “devotes a whole volume to the role of the Department of Education, examining the extent to which the department ensured, or failed to ensure, that its rules and regulations were upheld by the institutions and that the basic standards set for the children taken into the care of the State were being met.”
The Ryan Report does nothing of the sort. Although the Report is impregnated with the lamentable outcome of Department of Education failures and shortcomings, the actual treatment of the department is covered in 42 pages out of 475 pages in Volume IV of the report. This is hardly “a whole volume”. In the single-volume, Third Interim Report, published by Mary Lafoy in 2003 there was far more material on the department, and it was infinitely more relevant.
Nor is the department covered at all well in what is in the report. The treatment of the Cussen Report and the Kennedy Report, events which, in their day — 1936 and 1970 respectively — were regarded as important, is skimpy and superficial. It is clear, for example, that the Kennedy Report was not properly read by the commission and no criticisms are levelled at its exclusion of vital material.
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