I will not be taking the full allocation for our group.

Sentiment score: 0.00

I welcome this legislation and acknowledge the hard work of officials in the Department of Children, Disability and Equality. I know the Minister of State and the Minister, Deputy Foley, will recognise that work as well. Work on this Bill has been ongoing for some time. I was involved in some of the drafting work relating to the Bill when I was in the Department. I hope that it transits quickly through these Houses. We have to consistently ask ourselves if our child protection laws and practices are effective. We must acknowledge that real progress has been made in this State on child protection since the referendum in 2012 and with the creation of the Department and of Tusla. Nevertheless, we are painfully aware that there are children who have been profoundly failed by those around them with a duty of care, including the State and its agencies. This Bill will strengthen the child protection architecture and increase both responsiveness and accountability where necessary. In terms of the Bill, a crucial element, and one I inserted, is section 10, which establishes the childcare implementation and inter-agency committee. This will put on a statutory basis, with very clear responsibilities, the committee I brought together on an administrative basis during my term as Minister. The committee involves Tusla, An Garda Síochána, the HSE, the Department of justice and others. Enhancing and strengthening inter-agency co-operation is probably the most crucial and the most consequential move we can make, especially as it had been clear to me that there is potential for lapses or failures in timely communication or timely engagement, particularly where it is essential that different parts of the State that deal directly with children should be talking to one another. As regards the most persistent critiques of the child welfare system in this country, from the children's ombudsman, from the last special rapporteur on child protection, from the childcare law reporting committee, all of those focused on situations where State agencies disagreed or stuck very rigidly to their own remits and children were left exposed and fell through cracks. Absolutely, there are good examples of inter-agency co-operation already in place, but every agency will admit that it is not absolute. Making it a statutory obligation, as this Bill does, for organisations to engage frequently and to meet promptly is a very important function. This section sets out in detail the objectives and functions of this committee, who exactly will be part of it and, crucially, the means through which information will be shared and accessed in pursuit of child protection. This is a good move, but one thing that cannot be placed in legislation, I am sure the Minister of State will agree, is the need for a strong chairperson. That role will be indispensable in making this committee work. I know the weight of obligations placed on those who will be its members - the Department, the assistant Garda commissioner, senior HSE executives - will be great. I know all will be absolutely committed to the matters at hand, but that co-ordinating role of a chair will be important. As regards the childcare implementation and inter-agency committee, which, as the Minister of State knows, has been meeting on an administrative basis for almost two years at this stage, putting that on a firm statutory basis, as this legislation will do, is really important. I also acknowledge in this Bill the legal requirement for relevant bodies to co-operate. That is provided for in section 11, relating to the duty to co-operate, which mandates not only collaboration but also the sharing of hard data and information. That is another important point in ensuring that vital information about child protection issues is never held or guarded by one agency of the State on the basis of maybe some sort of quibble over the general data protection regulation, GDPR, or the like. I also welcome the inclusion of the new section on guiding principles to the 1991 Act. This is an essential piece and brings the Act into proper alignment with the modern view and the foundational basis of our entire suite of child protection legislation. By rights, this probably should have been done after the 2012 referendum. It has taken us too long to get to this point, but it is important that these guiding principles now form part of the law. These are the fundamental principles that give effect to the duty to respect the rights of children and their best interests and to have the views and preferences of children known, understood and given consideration and due weight. I also acknowledge the important improvement in section 6 where it comes to the operation of voluntary care, where the Bill seeks to give Tusla the ability to address more effectively short-term care needs of children requiring care. Voluntary care is an important part of our child welfare mechanism. It ensures that parents can, in agreement with Tusla, allow their child to go into care for a certain period. However, because it is done by agreement, there was maybe some lack of formality over elements of the voluntary care system. Even though it is voluntary, that formality needs to be in place because anytime a child leaves the care of their parents and goes into the care of the State, that is a significant moment. I welcome the measures addressed towards foster carers. A safe and nurturing foster home is always a better option for a child than being in a residential placement, particularly at a time of such enormous demand for Tusla's services. Efforts have been made to make fostering more sustainable and to recognise the hugely important work foster carers do, but more is needed, so I am happy to see this measure adopted in the Bill. It is not in the Bill yet, but the Minister referred to placing the national review panel on a statutory footing. Again, that is an important step that is needed. The national review panel plays an incredibly important role. It investigates those situations where a child has died or been involved in a serious incident while known to the State or in the care of the State. The learning from the work of the national review panel is incredibly important in making improvements to our child welfare architecture across the State and ensuring that similar situations do not occur again. Placing it on a statutory footing, I think, will further strengthen the key role that organisation plays. The final point I will make is that I was always conscious of the criticisms about Tusla that we often hear in this House. Where there is an organisation looking after the most vulnerable of children, it is essential that it is open to criticism and open to the need to improve at all times the services it provides to children. It is also important to recognise the context in which Tusla operates. Between 2020 and 2024, there was a 39% increase in referrals to the Child and Family Agency. That is a dramatic increase in the scale of provision that it had to engage with. As well as the scale, there is also the complexity of the cases, including children who were facing very different needs as a result of Covid, children who were neurodivergent and children whose first language was not English. The scale of change that Tusla had to address in that period was huge. As much as there are incidences where there is very legitimate criticism of the Child and Family Agency, I had the privilege to see the huge work that the agency itself and many of the organisations funded by it undertook and undertakes in communities all over the country. When we ask why it is so hard for the Child and Family Agency to recruit young social workers into those key front-line posts in Tusla, we have a responsibility in this Chamber as to how we speak about it and its agencies' work, always looking for improvement and highlighting where errors or mistakes have been made but also recognising its crucial job. There is no more difficult job than that of a social worker who has to go into a family situation where a judgment has been made that children need to be removed. It happens only in the most crucial and the most difficult situations. It is important as well as looking to improve Tusla and its operations at all times. We have obligations in terms of supporting its work as well.

Sentiment score: 0.34