The head of the Dáil's Public Accounts Committee, John McGuinness, has said the HSE has been incompetent in terms of how it has dealt with a foster home, at the centre of sexual abuse concerns.

It has emerged another vulnerable adult, who was privately placed in the home in the south-east, was not removed until 2013.

The HSE had removed its last resident in 2009.

The Irish Examiner reported that a person with significant intellectual disabilities continued to live at the home of the foster care family who were accused of extreme sexual and physical abuse four years after officials were alerted to the scandal.

Mr McGuinness said the HSE have some serious questions to answer when they appear before the Dáil committee tomorrow.

He said: "We need to also find out why it was that the health boards at that time took little or no interest in what was actually happening in that house.

"The standards being applied, the type of care being delivered, or not being delivered, and why it didn't respond to a caution from a UK authority to say they had suspicions about what was going on in the home."