Tusla report and child protection
Deputy Micheál Martin raised HIQA’s damning report on Tusla and said it showed the agency was not fit for purpose. The Taoiseach accepted the report, praised its commission and implementation, and defended the Government’s funding and mandatory reporting measures despite Martin’s criticism that the same failures had been identified before.
I pay tribute to the Health Information and Quality Authority, HIQA, for its hard-hitting and uncompromising report on Tusla, the Child and Family Agency, set up by the Government four years ago. Its conclusions, which follow the investigation which was necessitated by the false allegations pertaining to Maurice McCabe, are serious and damning and call for a fundamental review of the agency and whether it is fit for purpose. The report is alarming in that it says that, as a State, we are not dealing with current child sex abuse allegations properly or with the necessary level of capacity. Despite all of the inquiries into child sexual abuse in the past and all of the huge outrage in terms of what happened, it is extraordinary that in this day and age the Government and its agencies are simply not in a position to deal with sex abuse allegations. In fact, the report states that the systems failures within Tusla had the potential to put children at risk, which is a very worrying conclusion.
There is a list of issues. Some 165 sex abuse allegations await assessment. In the course of its review, HIQA escalated 65 cases to regional managers at Tusla where it was concerned about a potential risk to a child. The investigating team found cases which were inappropriately closed, inadequate managerial oversight, a gap between Tusla's national policies and what is happening on the ground, a lack of timeliness in responding to referrals and poor record keeping. It found actual cases of systems failures that, as I said, placed children at risk. Alarmingly, it found no standardised approach to direct and guide staff in the management of retrospective allegations.
There are the huge deficiencies in the working arrangements between Tusla and the Garda Síochána. There are no electronic transfer mechanisms. There is no electronic data transfer system between them and, instead, notifications of child sexual abuse are notified between the two agencies by fax or by phone. In this day and age it is extraordinary that both agencies do not have the capacity to notify each other electronically of suspected child abuse.
Does the Taoiseach have confidence in the Tusla agency, its board and its management? Does he accept it has a systemic problem which is putting children at risk? How does he account for the lack of any proper relationship between An Garda Síochána and Tusla at a formal level? Does the Government accept its failings in this regard and the need for a comprehensive reassessment of Tusla? It was set up in great haste and with great fanfare but it seems that huge deficiencies are still evident.
Comment on this
First, I thank Deputy Martin for raising this very important issue. I also join him in thanking HIQA for doing this very thorough statutory investigation and doing it in just over a year, which is reasonably timely for a statutory investigation. I also want to commend the Minister, Deputy Zappone, for taking the initiative of commissioning this report in the first place.
The Government accepts the report. The Department of Children and Youth Affairs accepts the report. Tusla accepts the report. It will be implemented in full and, in fact, Tusla will be accounting for it before the Oireachtas joint committee today. I do have confidence in Tusla to implement the report but we will be monitoring that very closely and we will be taking independent advice on the monitoring of the implementation of that report. I also point out that while the report is very critical and very hard-hitting, it does not say that Tusla needs the kind of overhaul the Deputy is suggesting.
I am very conscious of the serious nature of the findings. We are determined, as a Government, that the focus now is on speeding up the pace of existing reforms and implementing all of HIQA's recommendations for the benefit and safety of children who may be at risk. The Minister has been in touch with the chairman of Tusla's board, emphasising the urgency of action on the recommendations. She intends to meet the board shortly to discuss the implications of the report and the next steps. An immediate and systematic improvement is needed and it is intended to implement the recommendations in full as soon as is practicable.
Officials from the Department of Children and Youth Affairs met this morning with Dr. Moling Ryan, who will chair the quality assurance group which will drive the implementation and recommendations made by HIQA to assure us they are being implemented. The Minister, Deputy Zappone, is taking full responsibility and will publish regular updates on the group's work to keep the public informed of progress. The Minister is also working with Government colleagues on the cross-cutting issues, and there are many cross-cutting issues. For example, she is working with the Minister for Justice and Equality on a new approach to deal with historical allegations of child sexual abuse and is engaging with the Minister for Education and Skills on a new formal career path for social work. She will also work with HIQA to identify how a review of best practice in the regulation of children's social services can inform the development of a regulatory framework.
The response from Tusla and the openness of senior management yesterday to respond to questions are welcome. As I said, they will be appearing before the Oireachtas joint committee later today, where they will give further account. I expect there will be a robust and good engagement at that.
Comment on this
I could believe what the Taoiseach has just said if it were not for the record over recent years. Unfortunately, this is not the first we have heard of this issue. For example, HIQA conducted 12 inspections of Tusla child protection and welfare services between 2014 and 2016 and exactly the same issues arose in those reports, so much so that HIQA in 2015 reviewed the governance arrangements within Tusla because it was so concerned. Nine months ago, in October 2017, HIQA organised a meeting with the Minister and Tusla to apprise them of the fact that children were at risk because of systemic failures within Tusla. We have also had the Garda Síochána Inspectorate report on child sex abuse allegations with very damning conclusions.
This needs more than what the Taoiseach is suggesting. The response from Government is not urgent nor comprehensive enough and has been partially responsible over the last two to three years. This is despite all of the reports, for example, those from Geoffrey Shannon and the Ombudsman for Children. They are all saying the same thing but very little is happening on the ground in reality in terms of giving capacity and introducing proper change to make sure children are not at risk because of the systemic failures of our national child welfare agency.
Comment on this
It is important to stress the report is very clear that appropriate and timely action was taken where children were identified as being at risk of harm but, due to various failures in the way systems are managed, children at potential risk may have been missed, which is a very serious finding. It is also important to acknowledge that the report comments positively on the strategic direction and it comments that there is abundant evidence of considerable financial investment by Government and evidence to show better and more focused staff training has occurred. We should acknowledge that and acknowledge the front-line social workers who do such a good job in difficult circumstances.
The Deputy is right to talk about the record, and we have had many problems in setting up this agency and getting it up and running. We should not forget where we have come from. This was not a greenfield site. It was a question of taking Tusla out of the HSE and taking the Department of Children and Youth Affairs out of the Department of Health. It was not a greenfield site and it is very much an ongoing process of improvement. We are in a very different place than we were ten or 15 years ago when child protection was just an afterthought, an appendage to the Department of Health and to the HSE. We know that HSE boards, for example, regularly did not even discuss child protection at their board meetings. What have we done? We have totally changed from that old policy of the past, established a dedicated Department of Children and Youth Affairs, established Tusla as a dedicated agency, taking it out of the HSE, put children's rights in our Constitution and legislated to give effect to that.
