Now here's a stupid idea, and I'm gonna tell you why.

Seeing how it's St Patrick's Day, we'll pick on the Irish for a bit. What the hell, right? A babystealer is a babystealer, they come in all shapes and sizes, and they all suck.

We recently learned that the Irish government was considering taking away the failure of a child protection system from the HSE and creating a separate agency for the purpose of child protection in Ireland.

Apparently some people don't like this idea, as Fergal Landy here demonstrates in his or her (it's hard to tell these days) opinion column from the Irish Times.

Consider reform within HSE before setting up childcare agency

Fergal here says...

I AM concerned about the Government’s stated intention to create a child protection and welfare agency. I believe this policy needs to be interrogated before a decision is made. No evidence has been presented to show it will improve outcomes for children and families, and it seems it is being justified by a perception that current problems can’t be solved while the services are located within the Health Service Executive.

And while normally I would be concerned as well about the creation of any child protection agency, the Irish government has an actual opportunity here to do something right. I'm not suggesting that they have enough of a clue to do so or anything, I'm just saying that there is an opportunity here...

See, I have been at this for a while now. And I've watched all of these different situations play out. Some of us have noticed that whenever there is a major media circus revolving around a child abuse case or the failures of the system for whatever reason, the Child Protective Industry starts reviewing the cases and procedures, is suddenly going to fix everything, the ultimate solution ends up being them hiring more workers, or recruiting more foster care providers, or pumping more money into the system.

Reforms will come. Reforms will go. None of them ever solve the problem of them stealing children for frivolous reasons, nor will it solve the problems of children being abused, neglected, bounced around, drugged up, killed, etc while in foster care. It only tends to make the workers more jumpy and much quicker to snatch kids.

That said, there are a few of us who believe that reforms are a waste of time. Especially when you retrain the same idiots to do the same thing in different ways, which is usually the end result of any reform efforts. So, with that stated, the option of starting over from scratch doesn't sound like all that bad of an idea.

Fergal continues...

A decision of this magnitude ought to be based on a clear rationale rather than a perception.

And Fergal is absolutely right.

I believe there is potential for reform within the existing structure – potential that will be compromised by the creation of a standalone agency.

And they've tried that before.

The system sucks will fight to keep their meal tickets going. And apparently Fergal here is no exception. As Fergal demonstrates in this paragraph.

Although it requires improvement, the existing structure provides integration within the HSE of core services vital to child wellbeing, such as public health nursing, child psychology, child and adolescent mental health, speech and language therapy services, disability services, adult mental health, and addiction services. This integration and the potential to enhance it will be lost by creating a separate agency without having tried alternative basic and cost-neutral measures.

So you see folks, it's really not all that different over there than it is over here.