Should a parent who commits one of the greatest crimes imaginable against their own child still be trusted with their care? Should a father who has murdered his children's mother retain primary guardianship rights? Common sense would say no. Tusla, however, says yes.
It is hard to imagine any act more repugnant to the concept of parental care than murdering your children's other parent. On the contrary, it's clearly a form of child abuse.
The loss of a parent is one of the most traumatic and life-altering experiences a child can endure.
The knowledge that your beloved mother was deliberately taken from you by your father - the most common scenario - must intensify that trauma immeasurably.
For that father to then become your sole guardian, to be rewarded for his crime with that privilege, is surely an obscenity.
In June of 2019, James Kilroy beat, stabbed and strangled his wife Valerie French to death in their Mayo home.
Valerie was the main breadwinner and carer for their three little boys, two-year-old twins and a five-year-old, who were found in a 'highly distressed' state, frightened and dehydrated, when gardaí came upon the scene.
Kilroy tried to plead that he was legally insane at the time of the murder, so violent that Valerie couldn't have an open coffin, because he was suffering from a cannabis-induced psychosis.
The jury rejected this craven excuse because, as the judge said, 'self-induced scenarios are not defences', and he was convicted of murder.
And yet this monster, who slaughtered the boys' mother and pleaded mental illness as a defence, still believes he should remain as their sole guardian.
If he cared a jot for those boys, if he had the slightest remorse for what he did, and if there was even a shred of justification to his claims of mental disorder, Kilroy would have willingly relinquished their care to Valerie's family.
Instead, he now reckons he's sane enough to make crucial decisions about their welfare, their education, their upbringing and where they should live.
The sheer legal absurdity of this situation prompted Valerie's family, led by her brother David, to fight for a change in the law.
'Valerie's husband killed her brutally yet he retains all his parental rights,' said Mr French.
'This is an absolutely ridiculous situation. Killing a mother is child abuse. Children have to be protected from abusers.'
Three years ago, the British government introduced Jade's Law, named for the victim of a strikingly similar case.
In 2021 Jade Ward was stabbed and strangled by her partner as their four sons slept, and UK law was subsequently changed to suspend automatically the parental rights of anyone convicted of the killing of their children's other parent.
The suspension can be made permanent by order of a judge. Exceptions are made where a mother kills an abusive partner.
Here, Justice Minister Jim O'Callaghan has pledged to prioritise what's been dubbed Valerie's Law, the Guardianship of Infants (Amendment) Bill 2025, which also proposes 'the suspension of the powers, responsibilities and entitlements of guardianship in certain circumstances'.
Where those circumstances involve the violent killing of a child's other parent, the suspension of parental rights - not, after all, their automatic permanent removal - would seem a reasonable response.
Yet Tusla believes Valerie's Law would 'directly conflict' with its objective of building trusting relationships within birth families and guardians and suggests that it may be unconstitutional.
However, the Constitution recognises a hierarchy of rights, and if there is a conflict here, it's arguably between the rights of the murderous parent to the privilege of parenthood, and those of their bereaved children to be spared their dubious 'care'.
And the State already recognises that, in some situations, parents can be stripped of their rights over their own children.
Your children are not your possessions, and all rights come with responsibilities. Kilroy betrayed his children, abdicated responsibility for them and relinquished all rights to their guardianship when he doped himself on cannabis, murdered their mother and then faked mental health issues in a bid to shirk the blame.
It'd be a travesty of justice, setting us at odds with other jurisdictions, if Tusla succeeds in thwarting Valerie's Law.
But, once again, the organs of this State seem more concerned with the rights and entitlements of the criminals than the welfare of their victims.
And Valerie's siblings, who otherwise face years of having to defer to Kilroy for the simplest decisions about their murdered sister's little boys, are victims here too.