Serious and sustained failures by the State to properly protect 115 vulnerable children in its care are set to be 
revealed in an independent report into the deaths of children in care over 10 years, The Irish Times reports.
The report is to be published in the next few weeks, and comes after a series of damning revelations into how the Health Service Executive handles child protection issues.
The last few years have seen a number of reports highlighting failures in such cases.
Norah Gibbons, director of advocacy for children’s charity Barnardos, who was part of the review group, said in 2010 that the system for dealing with vulnerable children was “not fit for purpose”.
It is thought that the report will call for independent inquiries into a number of cases where serious failures occured or where authorities were unable to produce sufficient documentation on how cases were handled..
Failures on the part of the State in numerous cases may even lead to a number of legal actions by some families against authorities over the handling of individual cases.
Officials with knowledge of the report’s findings say many cases show a repeated lack of co-operation and communication between different agencies responsible for providing services to children at risk. Poor management and lack of follow-through on identified needs are also issues, along with lack of standardised methods to assess the needs of children and young people.
Geoffrey Shannon, a solicitor and specialist in child law, was the other member of the review group. Both he and Ms Gibbons were unavailable for comment yesterday, but Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald said the findings were “harrowing” and would be published as soon as the report got legal clearance.
Last year, it emerged that 35 children and teenagers known to the Health Service Executive (HSE) died between March of 2010 and, October 2011.
It was also revealed that were 16 serious incidents involving children or adolescents known to the HSE over the same time period.
Of those 35 deaths, most were due to natural causes, or accidents, but causes also included drug overdose, suicide and even homicide. The 16 cases described as serious incidents included accidents, parental abuse or neglect, or alleged sexual abuse.
Dr Helen Buckley, the independent chair of the National Review Panel, which reported the findings last year, criticised the HSE for numerous failures which led to sub-standard care in some cases.
In a report by the Health Information and Quality Authority last year, it emerged that some children were being placed by the HSE with foster parents who were not properly vetted.
The report into the HSE in Dublin found “significant deficiencies in the vetting, assessment and approval of carers, particularly relative carers” and “serious concerns in relation to child protection practices and the assessment of child protection concerns”.
An Irish Times report showed that fewer than 15 per cent of the convicted sex offenders on the sex offenders register are being properly monitored.
In 2010, 158 convicted sex offenders, out of 1,100, were supervised by the Probation and Welfare Service, according to figures obtained by the paper.
Meanwhile, the Children’s Ombudsman, Emily Logan, and child protection expert Geoffrey Shannon, have consistently complained that Children First, is not being properly implemented by State organizations, including the HSE.