Baby left alone overnight in graveyard in Kerry

The judge refused the care order ffs.

I saw comment on Twitter suggesting this incident was within the travelling community. There were, however, no sources to support the suggestions and nothing in the several news sources that I have seen to support that either.

It seems very strange. Mother taken ill or otherwise. A four month old faces a very real chance of death being left outside overnight. While I don't know the circumstances beyond what little was reported, this seems a criminal level of neglect.

Court has found the mother to be believable. Fair enough, we all feel unwell at some point.

The person who she left the child with could still be charged child neglect/endangerment. Surely this should be investigated.

It would most likely have been a 7 day emergency care order. Would have given enough time to investigate the circumstances and check that there were no issues relating to the care of the baby.

In most situations the child is returned unless there is a significant, immediate risk to the child's safety or welfare.

The mother brought a baby to a graveyard, became unwell (whatever that means 🙄), left baby with another person who then left the baby behind when they left. How long was the baby abandoned for? By any means this was not a typical "oops I forgot my child" incident.

It could happen to anyone.

But .....there's a massive difference between 15mins and returning yourself compared to a child being out all night and then found the next morning by a caretaker and being brought to hospital.

Absolute bottom of the barrel.

Yes, that's exactly the same as leaving a baby in a grave yard overnight to be found by somebody else the next morning.

Dias de los muertos Boss.

Even if the "tradition" is relatively new, that society is unwilling to challenge damaging nonsense from troublesome parts of society. We're so soft on all sort here cowboy builders, boy racers, corrupt bankers, urban feral teens, drug lords and sections of the travelling community.

Parents forgetting to collect kids from training, school, camps, etc. Parents assuming the other parent was on collection duty. Childminders, or relatives forgetting they were minding a child. I've come across it plenty of times through work unfortunately.

Ah yes, an "unfortunate misunderstanding", where a parent "misunderstands" that you shouldnt bring a child do a graveyard piss up in the middle of the night. Nevermind leaving them there.

No, an unfortunate misunderstanding which led to a baby being left behind. I don’t imagine anyone involved intended to do it on purpose. Seems reasonable to assume that’s why the Judge was of the opinion that it was unnecessary to grant Tusla a temporary care order.

The case has nothing to do with the circumstances of how the baby came to be left behind, it’s apparently very common, whether it’s in a graveyard overnight or a restaurant in the middle of the day. I’ve often forgotten stuff and left it behind me, never a baby though that wasn’t mine that I’d been asked to mind by someone else. People who know me are aware of how absent minded I can be.

As usual there are posters here making a mountain out of a molehill. The baby was returned to their rightful owners, no need for all the drama of having Tusla sticking their beaks in.

Apart from when of course, the child is left alone in the middle of the graveyard after a pissup.

They were lucky it was a mild dry night, as the child could have died.

It was 100% right that the child was monitored and checked over by medical professionals and members of Tusla, but I guess they were wrong to even check if the child was ok.

Not at all apart from anything. The primary role of anyone who involves themselves in those circumstances is to see that it is imperative that the child is returned to their family, as opposed to using the circumstances to insert themselves and use any opportunity to remove children from their family in service only of their own interests.

I’m not disputing the fact that it was 100% right that what appeared to be an abandoned child was checked over by medical professionals and the Gardaí and welfare officers and whomever else. I’m stating as a fact, not just an opinion, that their primary role is to reunite children with their families.

Whether through their own failings, or complete ignorance of that fact, anyone sought to remove the child even temporarily from their family in the belief that they were acting in the child’s best interests, that fact was clarified and made clear to them by the Judge in this particular case refusing to grant Tusla’s application for an order of temporary care.

Really basic stuff that anyone, regardless of their intellect, should be capable of understanding. It also shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that if someone were to separate their children from them, the last thing on anyone’s mind is being polite or civil to anyone who tries or is trying to either keep, or separate anyone from their family. A person would be foolish to underestimate the lengths anyone would go to in those circumstances.

Fortunately for them the case never came to that as the Judge involved made the correct decision in favour of the child’s best interests in refusing to grant Tusla an application for temporary care. One doesn’t have to have a very long memory to be mindful of our recent past in that regard and the damage it has done to Irish society when removing children from their families was an acceptable practice. We all know how that turned out for those families and their children.

What I don't get is how people just left the baby in a pram as they're leaving. Any decent human would try contact a family member or even the gardai, but no, some of the last people left knowing there was a baby in a pram. Sick animals.

You’re not nipping anything in the bud, you’re just presenting an entirely different set of circumstances where there is evidence of a child being abused, not circumstances where a child appears to have been unintentionally abandoned.

That child was subject to Willfull Neglect, and hopefully those involved will be charged accordingly. We need another NGO to promote safe outdoor drinking with infants, it may help reduce infant mortality in the community, which currently is three times the national average