The Cabinet’s due to sign off this morning on the terms for a state inquiry into the handling of the Grace case.
Ministers are expected to give the inquiry 12 months to investigate how Grace was left in a suspected abusive foster home.
The inquiry will have six months to issue an interim report, and 12 months to finish its work.
It’s designed to establish exactly how Grace was left with her foster family in the first place, what monitoring there was of her placement, and the decisions made about how she was left there.
It will also investigate the extent to which there may have been abuse, irrespective of who might have carried it out.
There’ll be particular focus on the decision made in 1996 to remove her, and why it was not followed up.
That decision was abandoned after the foster family lobbied the then-health Minister Michael Noonan.
The inquiry will examine whether what followed was normal practice, or whether it constituted an intervention on his part.
