I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Bill. Vulnerable children have been treated terribly by the State and it is a dark mark against the Government and the previous Government. There are many good things in the Bill. There are bad things there also and I want to go into detail on them. When it comes to child protection and child welfare, there is no doubt we have to get better in terms of inter-agency communication and co-operation. There also needs to be transparency around data. We in Aontú have raised this issue in the Chamber over and over again. We have raised the individual reports produced by the national review panel on the deaths of children in State care. Some of the observations of the national review panel and Dr. Helen Buckley are harrowing. There are serious gaps in the level of inter-agency communication and internally between different geographical Tusla units. Certain areas are not communicating with each other at all. These gaps are resulting in the deaths of children. I am thinking of instances where CAMHS has refused to accept children who are referred to it by Tusla simply because CAMHS does not have a policy on accepting children who use drugs or alcohol. Hugh was 16 when he died from a drug overdose after CAMHS told Tusla it would not take him. Niamh was another child under Tusla's care. She died at the age of 15 by suicide. She too was deemed ineligible by CAMHS. Another report about a girl called Ava under Tusla's care showed how she disclosed sexual abuse but nobody from Tusla spoke to her because in the Tusla area she was in, they assumed a social worker in the area where the alleged abuser lived was speaking to her. She was discharged from CAMHS after a mere two appointments and her body was found a few days later. She was 14 years old. It is welcome that an inter-agency committee is to be set up under the legislation but it has an enormous amount to do. There is little joined-up work happening between various agencies and officials are passing children from Billy to Jack. These children are falling through the cracks and they are being left with no supports, abandoned to the point where I am reading the details of the findings of the inquests of their deaths. This has been the result of Government action. I have huge issues with the Bill and how it deals with separated children, migrant children, young people in aftercare and care leavers. The former Ombudsman for Children, Dr. Niall Muldoon, asked that specific provision be made in the legislation for unaccompanied children. Children who are placed into voluntary care require parental consent for this to happen. Provision must be made for those children who are orphans or who are in this country alone without their parents to ensure their rights are protected in the care system. We cannot continue to accommodate these children under section 5 of the Child Care Act. It is outdated and effectively creates a two-tier system for children's rights. When unaccompanied children do not get allocated a social worker and they do not get allocated a care plan, it is a major difficulty. We also need to do better in legislation for birth mothers in this country. A number of women, and it is primarily women, ring my office to air grievances they have with Tusla. Birth mothers whose children have been taken into care feel aggrieved by the process. There does not seem to be a proper structure of support systems for such mothers. There is no fair means through which they can air their grievances. There are no psychological supports. There is an in camera rule that leaves them terrified to speak about their experiences. In some cases, they are afraid they are breaking the law just by talking to me or to the Garda. They are afraid Tusla will come after the remaining children if they criticise it. The free legal aid system is not fit for purpose in how it treats birth mothers. Many of them have long and complex stories to tell. When one of these mothers rings my office I know it will take hours to go through all of the issues she has to discuss. The free legal aid provided is five minutes with a barrister before a court case. We also need to have a strengthening of parental rights, procedural fairness and independent oversight. This is what birth mothers are looking for. I want to talk about the recent report of the Child Law Project. The details of the project are shocking. It is very alarming and very sad. We know we have a crisis in Tusla in terms of child protection. We have seen multiple cases in recent times where children have gone missing from care, where Tusla did not know where they are, where children were killed while under the care of Tusla, and where a child was raped under the care of Tusla. There are horrendous details in the report. One case involved a mother who was sold to a man who sexually abused her. She was found with her baby on the side of the road by a passer-by who called the Garda. We in Aontú have consistently raised these issues, particularly about the number of children not assigned a social worker. We have also been very outspoken on the scandal of human trafficking in this country. For a long time, I have been the only voice in the Dáil raising these issues. This has to change. We need a full debate about the crisis in Tusla.

Sentiment score: -0.02