The Health Service Executive (HSE) is “not fit for purpose” when it comes to looking after the welfare of children in care, an expert on the subject has claimed.

Norah Gibbons, director of advocacy at the children’s charity Barnardo’s, who is one of two people reviewing deaths of children who were, or had recently been, in the care of the HSE at the time of their deaths, or who were known to the child-welfare system delivered the assessment yesterday at the McGill Summer School.

She is one of the leading voices behind the call for a referendum on children’s rights, which is intended to make it easier for social workers to intervene in married families.

Implicit in this would be a greater number of children being looked after by the HSE, whose system for looking after such children Ms Gibbons described as “confused and unwieldy”.

Her comments come just days after Mary O’Rourke TD, who chaired the Oireachtas Committee which drew up a proposed wording for a children’s referendum, again called for the wording to be agreed by Government and put to the people “as quickly as possible”.

Ms Gibbons said of the HSE: “There is a lack of leadership, a lack of clear national standards, a lack of a clear assessment model and no national agreement on the threshold we as a nation want to set in respect of protecting our children.”

She is chairing the HSE inquiry into the childcare case in Roscommon.

Referring to last week’s HIQA report on foster care, Ms Gibbons quoted Minister for Children Barry Andrews, acknowledging management failings within the HSE.

“He has worked hard in many ways to improve things for children in need of protection. He is still of the view that the HSE is the only way to go.

“Well, minister, I have to disagree. I know the arguments that child welfare and protection services need to work closely together, that communication between disciplines is essential, but the evidence all points in one direction — the HSE is not fit for the purpose of protecting the welfare of children, it is not fit for the task,” she said.

She told delegates that the HSE had been established at arm’s length from the Department of Health, and had “no clear leadership with specific expertise in the area of child welfare and protection”.

While welcoming the minister’s announcement of the appointment of a national director for child and family services, she warned that unless the director was supported nationally and regionally she or he was likely to fail.

“They are going into a confused and unwieldy system that is much more committed, with some notable exceptions, to protecting itself than to protecting children,” she said.

The child-welfare advocate stressed that there needed to be a serious examination on how the child-protection system could be overhauled. “Without drastic re-focusing and real intention to change, our system will continue to fail children across Ireland,” she said.