Apologies have been received from Deputies Aisling Dempsey and Clare Kerrane and Senators Nikki Bradley, Nessa Cosgrove and Sharon Keogan.

It is fitting that we are meeting on this very special day. I wish all the children of Ireland and those around the world a very happy World Children's Day. Members of this committee will work collectively to try to influence policies that will enhance and improve the lives of children growing up in Ireland.

We resume our discussion of child poverty and deprivation, having already had a number of meetings on the issue. We are very happy to be joined by Ms Collette Deeney, co-ordinator of the Monaghan Children and Young People Services Committee, CYPSC, who will talk about the local area child poverty action plan pilot of the local community development committee, LCDC. We will be joined presently by Mr. Packie Kelly, manager of Teach na nDaoine Family Resource Centre. From Northside Partnership, I welcome Mr. Paul Rogers, chief executive officer, and Mr. Niall Sexton, programme manager of the Preparing for Life programme. From Archways, we are joined by Dr. Sean McDonnell, deputy CEO, and Mr. Stephen Coughlan, manager, systemic family support. Joining us from the Area Based Childhood Programme Managers Forum are Mr. Gavin McGee, chairperson, and Ms Catriona Flood, manager of the early learning initiative. I welcome Ms Clodagh O'Mahony, project manager of the House - Cox's Demesne Youth and Community Project. From the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, ISPCC, I welcome Ms Fiona Jennings, head of policy and public affairs, and Ms Laura Power, services manager.

The purpose of this engagement is to discuss with stakeholders the challenges facing children living in and at risk of poverty in Ireland. The witnesses are all very welcome. I ask them to bear with me as I deal with some housekeeping matters.

I advise members who join the meeting online that the chat function should only be used to make the on-site team aware of any technical issues or urgent matters that may arise and should not be used to make general comments or statements during the meeting. I remind members of the constitutional requirement that they be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex to participate in public meetings. I cannot permit a member to participate if he or she is not adhering to that constitutional requirement. Therefore, any member who attempts to participate from outside the precincts will be asked to leave the meeting. In that regard, I ask any member participating via MS Teams, prior to making their contribution, to confirm they are on the grounds of the Leinster House campus.

Before inviting the witnesses to deliver their opening statements, I advise them that they are protected by absolute privilege in respect of their presentations to the committee today. This means they have an absolute defence against any defamation action relating to anything they say at the meeting. However, they are expected not to abuse this privilege and, as Cathaoirleach, it is my duty to ensure it is not abused. Therefore, if witnesses' statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that witnesses comply with any such direction.

Each speaker will be allocated three minutes to deliver an opening statement. The opening statements will be followed by a question-and-answer session with members. I will call the witnesses in the following order: Ms Deeney, Mr. Sexton, Dr. McDonnell, Mr. McGee, Ms O'Mahony and Ms Jennings.

We have clocks on the walls to give the witnesses a sense of time. I invite the witnesses to deliver their opening statements, starting with Ms Deeney.

I thank the Chair and the members for the invitation to appear before them today. I am grateful for the opportunity to talk about our interagency action for families project and to acknowledge the work of the children and young people’s services committees, CYPSC, and the local community development committees, LCDCS.

Based in Tusla and funded through the Department of Children, Disability and Equality, there are 27 CYPSC nationally. Each committee plays a vital role in interagency and collaborative work supporting children and young people up to the age of 24 years. In 2024, as part of Ireland’s national action plan and commitment to the European child guarantee, the Department invited applications to establish four pilot local area child poverty action plans. The funding was from the Department’s what works initiative funded under the dormant accounts initiative of the Department of Rural and Community Development and the Gaeltacht.. Under this scheme, CYPSCs and their equivalent LCDCs were invited to submit a joint application for up to €100,000 in funding to design and implement a pilot plan that would respond to their local need and contexts while utilising existing co-ordination structures. No one agency can address the complex issues of families living in poverty and we see a shift towards joint commissioning of services and cross-governmental Departments working to address our commitments in the EU child guarantee and on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Article 24 states that children have the right to good health and Article 27 states that all children have a right to a good standard of living and where needed, this should be government assisted.

The local area child poverty action plan pilot scheme was designed by the Department and the Department of rural and community development in consultation with the Department of the Taoiseach’s child poverty and well-being programme office. The overall objective of the plans is to improve outcomes for children and families by enhancing service integration and supporting disadvantaged families to effectively access appropriate services in their local areas. The plans are based on a detailed understanding of child poverty in each area and will also identify and define service gaps. In September 2024, four local plans were selected and launched in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown and Wicklow, Monaghan, Tipperary and Kildare.

The initiative was approved for a second year of funding in 2025. In 2024 and 2025, the Department provided €186,000, or €93,000 each year, to Monaghan CYPSC and Monaghan LCDC. Our model of the family support champion and co-ordinator seeks to support families where they are at in a strengths-based approach. While some families may already be accessing support from outside agencies, this project takes a meitheal approach, looking at the needs of individual families and how we can collaboratively support them.

Over the course of the pilot, our aim is to work with between 20 and 30 families. We currently have nine families enrolled in the project, with a total of 34 children and young people in total. This is the start of the intervention, so it is early days, but the family support champion is building relationships and gathering the strengths and needs of the families. We are also collaborating with the centre for implementation research at the University of Limerick, which is leading an evaluation of each of the four pilots and supporting an ongoing assessment of implementation and data collection. This will be used to consider the mainstreaming potential of each of the pilots and expansion nationally. The evaluation will end in late 2026.

I thank the committee for the interest it has shown in our work. When Mr. Kelly, the manager of the Teach na Daoine Family Resource Centre, gets here, he and I will be happy to answer any questions

I thank the Cathaoirleach, Deputies and Senators for the opportunity to speak today on behalf of Northside Partnership. I am joined by our CEO, Paul Rogers.

At Northside Partnership, through the preparing for life programme, we work directly with families from pregnancy right through to school entry. Our goal is to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty by giving every child the best possible start in life. We do this through evidence-based home visiting, parenting supports and strong partnerships with schools and local services.

Research conducted by University College Dublin, UCD, on our home visiting programme for families demonstrated that preparing for life improves school readiness, supports positive parenting and enhances children’s cognitive and social outcomes. Critically, these outcomes have been proven to be long-lasting and measurable long after the family’s participation in the programme ended. This programme has the potential to disrupt the cycle of intergenerational poverty for children growing up in areas experiencing high levels of social injustice.

Professor Orla Doyle of UCD has shown that programmes such as ours have a return of €1.60 for every €1 invested through savings to Departments including social welfare, justice, health and education. We are now seeing policy moving towards an expansion of these programmes with the Department of children and Tusla starting to invest in a national programme of home visiting.

Northside Partnership builds on this early intervention work with families with a comprehensive suite of offers that support children through school and on into further education and employment opportunities. Underpinning these offers is an approach called advantaged thinking. Using an advantaged thinking mindset, we seek to invest in people’s abilities and strengths and encourage growth and development rather than simply focusing on problems and deficits. Our model is grounded in collaboration with parents, local community organisations and the statutory services. Northside Partnership supports many smaller organisations in the area, as well as providing a stable base for innovative action and programme development. We work in partnership with many Departments, bridging the gap between national policy and local leaders and volunteers. This work is characterised by strong personal relationships with volunteers, parents, staff and managers in local services.

However, sustaining this work is a constant challenge. North Dublin has experienced a significant increase in population, with whole new communities of Belmayne and Clongriffin and new housing being constructed in Coolock and other areas within our catchment area. The necessary support infrastructure of schools, health services and transport are simply not available at the time these communities are built, placing more pressure on the existing services. This leads to frustration and anger, which we saw play out on our streets in July 2024.

What is required now is stable, multi-annual funding and a national commitment to integrated early intervention. Children growing up in poverty deserve more than short-term solutions. They deserve a system that backs them from the very start, one that recognises that the best way to tackle poverty is to prevent it.

Archways welcomes this opportunity to make a submission to this committee. I will be speaking today along with my colleague Mr. Coughlan, the project manager of Archways' systemic family support service.

Archways is an organisation that has spent nearly two decades working to improve the lives of children, young people and families across Ireland. Our vision is rooted in a simple but powerful belief that every child deserves the opportunity to thrive and flourish. We believe that a society where children and families are experiencing challenges requires the ability for them to be empowered to create lasting change in their lives. We achieve this through early intervention, prevention and the delivery of evidence-based programmes that support psychological, emotional, behavioural and social development.

From antenatal supports to adolescent interventions, our work spans the full developmental journey of a child and adolescent's life. We partner with communities, professionals and policymakers to ensure our impact is both deep and lasting. Programmes like the blue skies initiative, families first and the changing lives initiative are examples of how we are building resilience, strengthening families and shaping systems that work for the betterment of everyone within communities.

Archways does not just respond to need; we seek to anticipate it, research it and build the capacity to meet it. Together, with all of our partner organisations in the room , we are creating a future where fewer children will fall through the cracks.

Our primary organisational speaker today is Stephen Coughlan, project manager of our systemic family support service that operates in north Dublin.

The young people, families and communities we work with have experienced a fundamental breach of trust. It has disrupted the sense of cohesion they rely on to feel secure and connected to our broader society. Our work suggests that for our young people, the initial breach of trust stems from not having their psychological and physiological needs met.

They have little food or access to a healthy diet. They live in overcrowded homes or homelessness accommodation. They often have no electricity or heating. They are often not in school, or no school will take them. They live in fear due to the level of criminality in the area. Numerous houses are boarded up in their community, while open drug dealing is rife and goes largely unchallenged. In the past few months, six state-of-the-art CCTV systems have been cut down or burned. This has demonstrated to the community and to our clients not simply that the area is unsafe, but that it is also beyond the State’s capacity to make it so.

Without these foundations, families exist in permanent crisis mode. Parents cannot provide consistent emotional regulation when worried about where their children will sleep. Young people cannot focus on behavioural change when hungry or unsafe. Our data shows that 37% of our referrals come through Tusla, indicating child protection concerns are often intertwined with poverty-related neglect.

We are here to discuss basic human entitlements. Articles 27 and 28 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child stipulate that children must be guaranteed adequate living standards and education, yet our participants routinely experience educational exclusion, housing instability and food insecurity. Article 12 enshrines the child's right to be heard. Our young participants have consistently told us they want family connection, safety and legitimate opportunities.

One 17-year-old participant described feeling trapped by circumstances beyond his control.

First, we demonstrate reliability through consistent support with immediate needs - accompanying families to housing appointments, advocating at school meetings and ensuring food security. This creates the conditions for sustainable development goal, SDG 16, peace, justice and strong institutions, by rebuilding faith in adult systems. Second, we provide sustained therapeutic intervention averaging 12 months. Our bespoke evidence-based model demonstrates that families can develop new communication and behavioural patterns, but only after providing basic needs creates stability for learning.

We recommend policy frameworks that: prioritise housing stability and food security as prerequisites for other interventions; fund integrated services addressing both immediate needs and therapeutic support; and recognise that meaningful change in complex trauma requires sustained investment, not brief interventions.

I thank the committee for the invitation to address it on issues relating to child poverty and deprivation. My colleague Ms Flood is the ABC manager for the Dublin Docklands and Grangegorman.

The committee may be aware that the ABC programme was formally launched in 2015 as a pilot child poverty programme housed within Pobal, and that this year we celebrated our ten-year anniversary, having been granted mainstream funding allocated within the national prevention, partnership and family support office of Tusla – The Child and Family Agency. Currently, there are 12 ABC programmes, located within areas that, at the time of development, recorded the highest levels of deprivation and disadvantage throughout Ireland. Eight of these area-based programmes are situated throughout the greater Dublin area, with the remaining four sites based in Limerick city, Cork city, Bray and County Louth.

The ABC programme’s vision is: "An Ireland where no child is impacted by poverty and all children are supported to reach their full potential". Subsequently, the mission of the ABC programme is to “Through prevention and early intervention approaches ... work in partnership with families, practitioners, communities, and national stakeholders to deliver better outcomes for children and families living in areas where poverty is most deeply entrenched”.

To achieve this, we use a three-pronged approach of direct delivery of prevention and early intervention supports for children and families, capacity-building training and support for services using evidence-based approaches and informing whole system change with decision-makers at local and national level. Essentially, we aim to engage families, primarily with children under the age of six, as early as possible, and deliver a series of evidence-based supports to help improve developmental outcomes for their child. For example, this may be in the form of home visiting support, parenting programmes, social and emotional development programmes or speech and language support. We work in partnership with other services that support families in each local area including schools, early years services, community services and statutory based organisations such as the HSE or Tusla. Within each local area, the ABC programme provides a vital interagency link between relevant services and helps prevent duplication of these services.

Amid the cost-of-living crisis and changing landscape of children living in poverty, we are seeing a widening of the gap between those areas categorised as affluent and those categorised as disadvantaged. This is evidenced throughout the latest census 2022 data, and is yet to include those placed in emergency accommodation and direct provision in the three years since the census was carried out. International geopolitical factors are having a huge impact on communities, with the most vulnerable children being significantly impacted. We know children who live in areas of high deprivation and poverty are more at risk of poor developmental outcomes, as opposed to those living in more affluent areas. We know the impact of poverty is even further compounded by limited access to services and supports already under severe pressure in terms of resourcing and staffing allocation. These include speech and language supports, assessments for children with additional needs or even child protection.

However, all the evidence we base our ABC work on tells us that prevention and early intervention is far more efficient at producing better outcomes for children and far more cost effective than trying to address complex issues later in that child’s life. The ABC programme uses evidence-based interventions, collects data on impact and is aligned with the national policy frameworks. From data and anecdotal evidence on the ground, we can see the positive impact of area-based working. We welcome any questions.

Like everyone else, I thank the committee for the opportunity to discuss the issue of child poverty. We are a community-based, not-for-profit organisation with charitable status and are compliant with the charities governance code. We are based in the equivalent of four local authority houses in the heart of one of the six extremely disadvantaged areas in County Louth, with a Pobal index of -30.78. We try to offer what we call a wraparound service through our programmes and interventions. These include: an after-school service; a youth diversion project; an early school leavers project in partnership with the Louth-Meath Education and Training Board, LMETB; a north Dundalk family support hub, funded through Tusla; and a young people's probation project. We try to span the whole gamut of a young person's life.

I will focus on four areas I think are contributing hugely to child poverty. One of my first points is to focus on the fact that some areas in the country have a high concentration of poverty where there is intergenerational poverty that is actually getting worse, and these areas are becoming more and more entrenched in chronic poverty, with children suffering most of all. In September 2025, an area profile of north Dundalk was commissioned by community-based projects and Louth children and young people's services committee, CYPSC. The deprivation figures are very stark. According to them, 15 small areas in north Dundalk have been categorised since 2022 as extremely or very disadvantaged, with deprivation scores ranging from -20.17 to -30.78. Five of the fifteen areas remained the same from the 2016 census, but the remaining ten have all moved to a greater level of disadvantage. Whatever we are all trying to do together to eradicate child poverty, it is not working. The statistics tell us that. We can see this on the ground in communities. I suggest there needs to be a radical and serious targeting of these areas where there is a concentration of intergenerational poverty. I have to get a wee speak in for County Louth. As a county, it has been hugely underfunded in comparison with other parts of the country. It is not commensurate, I believe, with the levels of deprivation we now have.

My second point is that addiction among parents, adult survivors of childhood trauma and intergenerational trauma are key contributors to child poverty. Essential services and backup such as detox places, addiction services and intensive family support, coupled with a radical overhaul of mental health services, are needed. Alongside this focus on parents, there needs to be the inclusion of therapeutic service multi-disciplinary teams that would work every day with children in and around schools to address the impact of childhood poverty and intergenerational trauma. According to a Red C poll in 2025, 85% of people agree that for children experiencing deprivation or poverty, school-based psychological supports are as important as teaching supports. I would add in therapeutic services and trauma-informed work.

Intensive family support that offers a wraparound service can help to break the cycle. To give an example, boy one is an 18-year-old male who has grown up in an extremely disadvantaged area. At age seven, he became involved in summer youth project programmes. Relationships were built with key workers. He participated in a pilot early intervention programme with the youth diversion project from nine to 11 years. He was referred to an early school leavers project aged from 13 to 15. He returned to full-time education, sat his leaving certificate in June 2025 and is currently on a post-leaving certificate, PLC, course in youthwork. We believe that what was key here to breaking the cycle were the community-based intensive interventions alongside supportive relationships.

Boy two is ten-years-old. His mother died from drug addiction when he was five. His father spent time in prison and has struggled with addiction. There has been an excellent wraparound service in the community, with community-based family support, home school liaison, school completion, an after-school service, an early intervention youth diversion project and a housing association. Father and son were in emergency accommodation for one year and were an open case with Tusla. They have been closed with Tusla. They have a two-bed apartment, which the child calls his forever home. All the agencies continue to work together to support them through crisis moments, which will come.

This leads me to my last point, which is the corporatisation and privatisation of community development and the eroding of the community voluntary sector. It is becoming more and more difficult to retain that bottom-up community development approach with the pressure on voluntary community groups. Increasingly statutory agencies are contracting private companies to deliver services that formerly were provided by the community voluntary sector. I might add that this is at a much higher cost to the State. I thank the committee. I am sorry I went over my time.

We have a little bit of scope today. I thank Ms O'Mahony. I call Ms Jennings.

I thank the committee for inviting us. The ISPCC’s purpose is to protect childhood. We provide all our services for free and acknowledge the funding we receive from the State and the generous support we get from the public. It is important that services are available for free and-or at a reduced cost where families cannot go private. We support children and families who experience child poverty and deprivation across our services from our child helpline Childline to our face-to-face work in the community, including in the International Protection Accommodation Service, IPAS. We will share their collective experiences with the committee today. Some of our key recommendations, which we are happy to go through, are the continuum of care, access to basic supports and supporting mental health. Today, we will go behind the statistics and share how child poverty and deprivation reveal themselves to us.

The ISPCC’s interventions are designed to meet the specific individual needs of each child it supports, when and where they need it.

Prevention and early intervention are critical to support children at the earliest possible stage, when difficulties begin to emerge in their lives. We work hard to build trust and reassure and validate them to ensure that this engagement happens and continues in a meaningful way.

In advance of this meeting, our colleagues, who have direct daily engagement with children, shared their insights with us. Home visits can tell a lot about a family. Some families are living in inadequate accommodation that has the bare minimum in relation to furniture and household goods. Social exclusion can start at a young age. Parents often avoid additional school activities as they cannot afford the additional costs, meaning the child misses out on activities their peers are engaged in. They can also experience such exclusion by their peers in the community and elsewhere. Children feel different and are treated as different. Child poverty often shows up in how children behave and express themselves. It can reveal itself with symptoms such as anxiety, withdrawal or acting-out behaviours that can be misread as being bold or difficult when really they are signs that something deeper is going on. They are often a sign that the child is struggling to cope in these circumstances. In a society in which materialistic things are considered the gold standard, children are living in a world with online portrayal of lives that are perfect, and this can and does have an impact on children's views of themselves, their feelings of self-worth and pressure to hide their true circumstances. All these factors can lead to mental health issues. Sometimes it is in the way children talk about home with worry or embarrassment or dealing with constant financial stress. Higher school absenteeism and poor social skills are also a feature of child poverty we see. Parents are having to make difficult choices such as whether to buy food or clothes or fuel for their car, constantly making impossible decisions at times of huge strain. The rising cost of living is putting more families under pressure and bringing them into deprivation. Poverty is not just about not having enough money; it affects the child's confidence, sense of safety and belief in what is possible for their future. More can be done and ought to be done to ensure that children are better, happier and safer.

I thank members for their attention. We are happy to answer any questions they may have.

Thank you for those wonderful opening statements and all the thought you put into them. Members, it is proposed to publish the opening statements to the Oireachtas website. Is that agreed? Agreed.

Before I call on the members, I remind them all that they have been allocated seven minutes' speaking time in the first round. I will be just as strict as I always am on the seven minutes because people have places to be. We will have scope for a bit more flexibility in the second round if they indicate that they would like to ask additional questions. I also ask them that when putting their questions they adhere strictly to the agenda topic under consideration at this meeting. I will now call on members in accordance with the speaking rota circulated, with some jumping around as best we can. I do not think we have anybody on Teams. I will start with Deputy Emer Currie.

I thank the witnesses for being here. There is so much in their opening statements that it is hard to know where to start, but I will start with recognition of the work they are doing in our communities. Certainly, in Dublin West we have fantastic community-led organisations doing incredible work on the ground from the bottom up, as was said, but I am afraid I get a sense that there is a lot of firefighting going on and dealing with crisis after crisis. I will ask a general question first. Is that how the witnesses and their teams feel? I met a group of people who run community crèches a few weeks ago. They do an incredible job. What they do on paper versus what they do in reality are two very different things. They work, obviously, in early education, learning and care but they seem also to do the work of family resource centres. They spend a lot of time trying to access the services those families need. In a lot of other early learning settings, a child will come every day and the attention goes on the child but, actually, a lot of the community crèches are working with families and all the challenges those families are facing. My question is a general one about how disconnected it can all seem when you are firefighting and dealing in crisis mode with families. How do we change that? We have our child poverty and well-being programme office in the Department of the Taoiseach. It is being prioritised at the highest levels. On a daily basis, however, what do the witnesses want to see change to take people out of silos? Today is an opportunity for them all to highlight the challenges they face together. How do we ensure there is integrated support? Mr. Sexton's sentence at the end of his statement, "What is required ... is stable, multi-annual funding and a national commitment to integrated early intervention", sums it up, but I want the witnesses to tell me just how disparate this is and how desperate it can be to ensure that they get what particular families require. I will start with Mr. Sexton but I want to hear from everyone.

The sense of crisis and of firefighting is absolutely real, and we see that in families. As regards any community service, as the Deputy says, a crèche is not just a crèche but also a family resource centre. Whether it is a school, a crèche or a youth service, all the services are providing a comprehensive range of offers of support to families.

On the ground, we are very connected. We know the local social workers and the youth officers. That level of connection on the ground is very strong and we have very strong relationships.

As regards the challenge, we work together and ensure that our programmes work together. If I have a particular service and manage a particular service and the youth service do a certain thing, we can ensure they are merged and working seamlessly for a family. The challenge comes at the governance level when each of them is funded through different funding streams and each has different requirements and different data we have to submit. At the local level, we are very co-ordinated; at the national level, it is a critical issue.

The outcomes from our home visiting programme are reaching child development issues and education issues and resulting in health improvements and in community development improvements. However, the core funding for our home visiting programme comes only from Tusla. Tusla and the Department of children have made a really strong investment in home visiting over recent years because they recognise the value of early intervention. If, however, we are seeing those outcomes across all those domains, be it health, education, justice or community development, it is important that all the other Departments are also funding home visiting. Home visiting and other early intervention programmes are evidence based. We have the evidence that, long term, they result in strong outcomes for children, parents, families and communities. It is a matter of seeing those outcomes continue and being able to expand the home visiting service. At the moment, we reach less than 1% of the potential population of children with home visiting, but the Department of children has a made a very strong investment. We need to see that level of investment and that level of co-ordination happen at a cross-governmental level to support early intervention.

It is hugely valuable to hear that. Does anybody else wish to comment?

As regards the whole issue of multi-annual funding, what we find in our services is that every 12-month cycle, we are going back again and putting in our applications and developing our service level agreements. We do not know whether we will still have that service the next year. Sometimes what is worse than having no service is putting in a service and then pulling it out the following year. That is certainly something we notice in the ISPCC that can impact us. It is a matter of developing long-term services that are there and that can tackle that intergenerational piece as well.

I will just add to that point. There is an essential ingredient that enables us all to do our work, and that is trust with the communities and the organisations we work with on the ground. It is really hard to maintain that trust when our services are so poorly funded.

Many of us are losing staff to the statutory organisations. They can pay higher rates and attract staff in at those rates. We are all funded on an annual basis. I have a team in Darndale, and I do not know at this stage whether I have the budget for it going into January next year. It is the first time in three years we have had a team to be able to work on the ground from a community development perspective. However, it was said to the staff in Darndale when they landed on the ground that they would be gone shortly. There is a sense in the communities that these are new services. They will roll on and, in a given period, funding will be pulled and they will disappear. It is so hard to build trust, and it is trust that enables us to work with families, schools and everybody else to bring people to a different destination and trajectory in their lives and create opportunities for them they may not be able to see. Many of the people we work with are in crisis in so many aspects of their lives that when they meet somebody with whom they build trust, we can then help them find a pathway forward.

Will I go straight to Deputy Ó Murchú or will I come back to him?

I thought they would take a question in there but that did not happen. Unfortunately, this place is not built to suit me. I know a number of the witnesses. We are all into declaring everything. My wife worked for Mr. McGee previously and works for Archways at the moment. I cannot be accused of anything.

Nobody needs to hear me pontificating. The witnesses said it all - drugs meet complexity, poverty, the housing crisis and the fact that there is no multi-annual funding. I have no doubt that the witnesses can talk about the gaps in their services. We have all been talking about early interventions but also that they need to long term in order to make an impact. We have all seen success stories and the failures. It is everything from early family supports right through to youth diversion and, beyond that, to the projects some of the witnesses are involved that assist in removing people from criminal activity and the grooming that goes on. We are nowhere near what is required when it comes to dealing with the need that exists. I do not think we are having a real conversation about any of this. We need to start having that conversation. What do we need to do if we are serious about dealing with the issues involved and with the children who are being failed?

We might start with the McGee, because he was indicating in the previous round.

This probably goes back to the point that statutory services are under so much pressure that prevention and early intervention are essentially being squeezed. We cannot deal with the issues because we are in a period of containment. We are holding cases and families and not getting to do early the intervention and prevention we sometimes need to do. Mr. Sexton spoke about home visits and the disparity in funding between the Department of children and the rest of the services. We can reach very few families throughout Ireland at the moment. For the families that we can reach, we are squeezed by limited access.

We are probably reacting too late.

That is it. Many of the issues are not being addressed because we cannot reach the universal services we should be able to reach. Children cannot get assessments of need. We cannot get our therapeutic supports families need to interrupt that intergenerational piece. More supports need to be put in place within the prevention area throughout the whole statutory sector. Otherwise, we cannot do our job. It is as simple as that. We are struggling to do our jobs because everybody else is struggling and we are filling in the gaps. Unfortunately, the community and voluntary sector has become a bit of a dumping ground for these agencies. The only way that can move forward is if we are resourced properly.

On what Mr. McGee said about the struggle with statutory services, we are becoming an important referral pathway for those services. In the Docklands, in Grangegorman and in other area-based child programmes, a huge amount of our referrals come from the HSE and Tusla. We are meant to be doing prevention work, but it is really hard to do that when you are jumping to different crises all the time. I definitely see that firefighting on the ground and within services. If we look at some of the classrooms we have close by in the ABC services in our areas, we can see that there are such diverse needs. There is trauma, children coming in from all over the world with other traumas and lots of different languages being spoken. If you are a teacher in that classroom, trying to teach is such a challenge when you are managing all of those other issues facing families.

On the previous question, as the Deputy was talking, I was thinking of a community-based project. We are being squeezed out more and more. Do not get me wrong; we have funding through the NCS, the Department of justice, Tusla and the Probation Service, but the issue is we are constantly going cap in hand, trying to have a tightrope between advocacy and challenge and making sure we are not going to affect our funding. For example, with our project, as the Deputy knows, we are engaging in financial forecasting and trying to establish that we have enough money to pay an adequate salary for a project manager, a finance manager, etc. We are putting in a management fee, and we have it all worked out. It is difficult; it depends on who you deal with in the statutory sector. It is difficult to see us surviving. We do not have anything near the same terms and conditions for staff. We have brilliant staff. Some of them have been there for 20 years because they are very committed. That is one thing about the community and voluntary sector. I also think that at times a lot of the statutory sector or different ones - I do not want to name any in particular - do far too much screening and signposting. People are not getting out there, getting their hands dirty and working on the ground.

Intervening.

There is too much of that going on. On firefighting and what change we want, I mentioned corporatisation and privatisation. I am talking about, for example, residential care at €15,000 a week for one young person yet our community project was doing most of the interventions. It is all of that. Private companies are doing family support, setting up and getting quite good contracts. Something needs to be done in that regard.

I echo what colleagues said about firefighting on the ground. The community and voluntary sector is really squeezed at the moment in terms of funding, resources and the capacity to deal with the families coming to us. Tusla is the primary referrer to the ISPCC. I along with our colleagues have seen the level of complexity rising in the families coming to us and their level of need. It is quite concerning in terms of child protection that we are holding a considerable amount of risk with these families because the statutory services are quite squeezed. We see quite a high level of turnover in statutory organisations such as Tusla in their social work departments. That has a knock-on effect on the community and voluntary sector and on funding. I definitely agree with what has been said about the need for multi-annual funding.

Too late, too long and not enough when we are talking about services. I assume I will get an opportunity to get back in.

Yes, of course. I call Senator Murphy O'Mahony, because I know she has to go to the Seanad for the Order of Business.

I welcome the witnesses and thank them for giving up their time. I acknowledge the fantastic work they do. I will be honest; I had not heard about some of their organisations but I am very impressed with their opening statements and their contributions so far. It is great they are here on World Children's Day. On this day in 1959, the UN Declaration of the Rights of Child was adopted. On this day in 1989, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted. As a result, 20 November is a big day for children.

We are discussing child poverty and deprivation. I am a huge believer in allowing a child to be a child. The days of childhood should be carefree, happy days. Unfortunately, poverty and deprivation prevent many children from enjoying such days.

With that in mind, I have a few questions. For the ISPCC, it was mentioned that child poverty has a big effect on children's mental health. Could Ms Power please expand on that? What could be done to help?

I thank the Senator. I appreciate the opportunity to answer the questions. On the ground, we are seeing a massive impact in terms of children presenting with anxiety and low self-esteem. This impacts on every aspect of their daily lives in terms of how they engage with peers and how they attend school. It even affects their capacity to get to school. Children are trying to get through the door each morning. What they have had to deal with at home to get to that point in their day is something that needs to be considered. The prevalence of this is quite alarming.

The Senator mentioned carefree happy days. In terms of vulnerable families, where children are living in emergency or homeless accommodation, we would certainly see that those days have certainly been stripped away from them. Their ability to play and explore the world around them in terms of meeting their developmental milestones is something we see quite regularly in the context of the families that we work with directly. That needs to be addressed. We would see that regularly in our direct work through our therapeutic support service and our suite of services that work directly try to support these vulnerable families.

My next question is for the Northside Partnership. Research from UCD shows a strong return on investment for home visiting programmes. What barriers are there to prevent the wider implementation of these programmes?

We have worked hard to establish a national system of home visiting. There are five core programmes. Preparing for life is one of those programmes. ELI also has ParentChild+ and community families. We have developed an infrastructure where we can train home visitors, provide the appropriate supports and supervision and ensure that the programmes are delivered according to the evidence-based model. We have the capacity to scale those programmes across the country. PFL has 11 or 12 sites. For all of the home visiting programmes, we are probably looking at about 50 sites at present.

The issue is around funding. At the moment, we are funded through the ABC programme, the early childhood programme and the children's fund, which is the memorial fund to recognise the impact of the mother and baby homes. The latter is a finite fund that will last for five years. It will provide €10 million over the five years. It is essential that we look to expand that funding across all of the various Departments and see a national investment. It is part of the First 5 policy and the Young Ireland policy framework. It is recognised and supported by policy. There is a commitment to do it, but we need the capacity to hire staff, put staff into programmes, train them and support them effectively. With the 50 sites to which I referred, it varies from site to site, but it is averaging two, 2.5 or three staff in communities such as Ballaghaderreen, Darndale, Kilrush and Louth. We are in urban and rural areas across the country. We have the capacity, a system, a structure and a national office of home visiting in Tusla to support and evaluate that and ensure it happens. What we need is a national investment across Departments to support the programme.

More money.

It is more money, but what is important is having experienced, skilled staff who understand the communities and have a partnership with parents. Home visiting works through partnership. It is the parent and the child and the home visitor working together. This is not a process of telling parents what to do; it is about working together, identifying what the parent wants, providing appropriate information, advice and support and travelling along the journey with a parent to ensure that the child arrives happy and ready and able to learn at school.

Parent buy-in is obviously important.

Absolutely. We certainly see that. We had an experience where a parent just had a baby. It was a vulnerable situation and there were difficult circumstances at home. The child had a medical issue and stayed in hospital. We had the home visitor go to the hospital with the mother while the child was in NICU for a number of months. Tusla and public health were involved. Over a period of a couple of months, we were able to see a situation where the mother was able to go home with the baby. The other services were able to take a step back when they knew that the preparing for life and home visiting programme were in place. The mother said she was happy and secure and that she was happy Tusla and public health were stepping back. However, she wants to make sure the home visitor stays with her. We are seeing that buy-in. We have that capacity to scale with the resources.

I thank the witnesses for coming in. The work they are doing is inspirational. I worked in youth services previously. The recognition the witnesses get long term for what they are doing now will be felt for generations to come. The problem I can see the witnesses having is that centralised funding and an easier model are needed. The latter would be revolutionary to the process. I think the witnesses would agree.

My first question is short and simple. Deputy Currie touched on this earlier on. What do the witnesses believe could eradicate the child poverty that we are currently dealing with? We have had child poverty throughout the ages. The country is doing so well, but we are struggling with child poverty. Many of the witnesses are Dublin based, but we also have child poverty in rural areas. I would like to get the feel for what we can do to change matters and move them forward. What kind of revolution do we need to address child poverty?

Revolution is probably a good word. Our understanding what poverty is and of child poverty has probably changed. Another report was published last week regarding people who are approaching services for support at Christmas time. These are families that would never have come to those services before. Many have mentioned that today is World Children's Day, and rightly so. In 1989, we ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. In 2012, we had a referendum on children that brought the best interests of the child aspect into our legislation and that led to it being recognised in the Constitution. That is in limited circumstances. What we have to do if we are to realise the vision and the intentions of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, UNCRC, and many people today have mentioned the different articles that are there that can address child poverty. We need to recognise that in our domestic legislation. That is something that the Ombudsman for Children has been calling for as well. It is certainly something we would support in order to address the intergenerational nature of poverty to level up, as we often refer to it. That is radical.

That is where we need to go. It is simple, is it not? Does anybody else want to come in?

One of the things that has been touched upon in many places here is the intergenerational aspect of child poverty. The Community Foundation Ireland recently published a report with the ESRI that points to parental circumstances in terms of low educational attainment and poor access to the labour market or low-paid employment and stuff like that. We face immediate challenges in creating the conditions for families to flourish. Mr. Coughlan touched upon those, including housing and income inequality. They are critical. If people do not have a basic, steady quality of life, then moving forward to achieve better outcomes is really challenging.

Some of those immediate things need to be addressed to create a stable foundation for people to step forward into other opportunities. The work that our preparing-for-life team does is absolutely foundational in building relationships with parents, supporting parents on a day-to-day basis and then walking with them as their child progresses in education and training. It also creates opportunities for the parents to move forward in their lives, maybe into further education and training and helping them move forward to higher employment. The best way to protect the child is to strengthen the family's capabilities and support the family. There are loads of opportunities out there but people really need one-to-one support, such as a mentor or this connection, which is a gateway to other services and supports that are out there. It is about trying to ease those pathways as much as possible.

Sometimes we need to look at other Government Departments to ask whether their activities are aligned to address child poverty. The Department of Social Protection does a huge amount through social transfers to support people at risk of poverty. However, the current labour market model is based on activation and people are at risk of having their payments stopped if they do not engage. Many people struggle to engage due, for example, to recovery from addiction or mental health issues. They need a system to support rather than sanction, one that encourages and is invested in developing their potential and trying to create pathways for people. We need a more humanist approach to the work in many ways, and one that is grounded in building the capabilities of individuals and families.

I agree with what my colleagues have said in terms of trying to target that intergenerational poverty. The area-based childhood programme works at direct delivery, that is, working directly with families and supporting them. There are lots of elements to that capacity building and it links in to what my colleagues mentioned. Working in early-years services, we are building the capacity of staff in those services and the vast majority of those staff members are probably from the local community. Through the home visiting programmes, there are models where we would bring in staff from the local area because they are known, trusted and respected in their community. That builds their capacity within their community. It is not just the impact they have on the children they visit because there is a wider impact on their whole family and community. The other aspect is the systems change element the ABC programmes try to effect, which is bringing the knowledge from the ground up and filtering that into situations like this and further up.

I agree with everything that has been said. The children and young people services committees are a really important and strong vehicle for bringing interagency oversight of what is going on in a geographical location and for everyone to be working together. We recently had a review from the Centre for Effective Services and one of the outcomes, which previous speakers mentioned, was that it looked at multi-annual funding. This is a huge issue that is needed for people to be secure and build up those lasting relationships with families that we have talked about. Through our project, we have been looking at a model called the human learning systems, which is very focused on that human approach of actually working within the community and understanding the drivers of poverty within it before you can start to try to support and help, and you look at what needs to be done to remove those barriers.

The rural areas were mentioned. For example, many of the services that have developed in County Monaghan are in located in Monaghan town, the main town, but for people living in the more rural towns like Ballybay or Clones, it is not as easy to access services. If we add to that an intellectual disability or English as an additional language, it really impacts on people's ability to come forward and access those services. The fact that our project has a champion will hopefully be the link that brings people along and act as a mentor to encourage them to access the services they need. It is a hugely complex and ever growing issue, but things have to change. The system is not working so we need to look at other ways of approaching it.

I agree with everything everybody has said. I sometimes feel we have been sitting around talking about child poverty and deprivation since I started this, which was 20 years ago. While funding is massively important, strategic thinking is more important. The reality is that we know where the intervention and prevention work really well. We know that targeted intervention for more complex needs works well. We know that economic and social concerns and difficulties can be directly addressed. Nonetheless, we, particularly in our systemic family support service, are dealing with third and fourth generations of the same families. As a consequence, we must acknowledge that what has been done to date has not worked. One of the reasons is that these families no longer trust the services that are available to them on the ground and, fundamentally, that breach of trust prevents the next generation of families engaging with services. It is not that we do not have services on the ground; it is that these families do not access them.

From our point of view, we have to have a real process of thought around how we strategically address that breach of trust because, frankly, unless that is addressed, we are going to be talking about the next generation of families. We know very well the number of families in each area who are not only experiencing difficulties, but are giving rise to difficulties within communities. Yet, we have never developed or deployed a single targeted provision to specifically address those families and bring them into the community or create a feeling within those families that they are a part of a community and would prosper within that community if they made use of the services that are available. Unless we develop a strategic approach to dealing with that, we can fund this forever because we have been funding this forever and the same problems still exist and will continue to exist.

I welcome the witnesses and the groups they represent to the Oireachtas. It is a learning curve for me. There are a lot of Dublin-based groups here. I am a Senator from Kerry. Child deprivation and poverty know no borders. It is encouraging to hear some of the reflections from the witnesses but it is not good to hear that the community and voluntary sector is a dumping ground. The issue the witnesses and groups face are what I am learning about this morning. If money cannot sort it, I really do not know what can.

Ms Jennings and Ms Powers spoke about the mental health impacts of poverty, including anxiety and withdrawal in children. What barriers are families facing in accessing timely mental health supports and how can Government policy better address these delays? I come from rural Ireland where mental health is a huge and hidden issue. It develops much earlier now. We talk about intervention and protecting kids from child poverty and deprivation. I ask the witnesses to comment on the mental health issue. I will come back on the issue of prevention and early intervention.

Last week in the Seanad, I discussed why SNAs, special needs assistants, who are in every school in the country, are not mandated persons under the Children First Act 2015. I am calling on that because if want to have early intervention, we need to identify kids in school who are showing signs. Those will be referred to the processes within the schools, but unfortunately SNAs do not have a mandate to report to Tusla or refer on to the ISPCC. I ask the witnesses to comment on the issue of mental health and whether they would support that call regarding SNAs.

The ISPCC provides services throughout Ireland, including rural-based communities. We do a lot of work with children and young people in the International Protection Accommodation Service, IPAS. If that is of interest, we can also speak a little about that and the specific compounded vulnerabilities they experience when it comes to child poverty and deprivation. We have so many examples of how we support those families. At the younger age groups, children and young people living in long-term completely inappropriate accommodation are not reaching their developmental milestones.

Small children do not have the space to run, fall or explore. They are not meeting those developmental milestones. That is compounded then by living in small spaces where they are not able to play at all or safely. They do not have those experiences while growing up. One of the Senator's colleagues mentioned that aspect of having a carefree childhood. Those children do not know what a carefree childhood is. They are born and moved into this type accommodation, and that is where some of them remain for quite a lengthy period. We know from an "RTÉ Investigates" report that there are 28,000 children and young people on a waiting list for primary psychology care. Some of those are waiting for up to 13 years. That is wholly inappropriate. Children are often referred to the service at four or five years of age. We can do the maths there. They have absolutely aged out when any letter of offer comes in to meet that particular need.

I will pass to Ms Power on the specific services piece and how it is compounded in terms of the mental health piece.

In our experience in the ISPCC, we deal with Tusla and CAMHS on referral pathways. Capacity in mental health services needs to be built for youth and adolescent mental health. It is a cohort from which we are going to see more and more issues arise because of the knock-on effect of Covid and the withdrawal from school and their peers. The waiting lists are a specific issue that needs to be addressed.

We also see an issue with the threshold at which CAMHS will accept a young person. That has a knock-on effect on services such as ours because we are left to try to hold a young person with complex and difficult needs without a siloed approach. We also have parents who are at their wits' end trying to get support for their children. Those waiting list times drastically need addressing.

On mental health and education, I would like to touch on an issue that I feel needs to be addressed, which is the need for more educational welfare provision. As thing stand, with compulsory school attendance for those between the ages of six and 16, engagement with education welfare officers, EWOs, ends at the age of 16, leaving very vulnerable young people between the ages of 17 and 25 with little or no direction or support in terms of where to go for their education. We have fantastic supports, such as Youthreach and other organisations, but there are not enough nationally to address that vulnerable age cohort of young adolescents, coming into adulthood, who are expected to have their education and future figured out by themselves without the supports that are there. That is an issue that needs to be addressed. That situation would, of course, lead to mental health difficulties for those very vulnerable young people who have aged out.

Ms Power is specifically speaking about 16- to 25-year-olds. The Youthreach programme is beneficial and working. Is there a gap in that, which the witnesses see?

I feel that nationally the criteria for being able to access these supports should be considered. It is not a national universal programme. Even if a young person does not meet the criteria for Youthreach, and does not have support to re-engage with education, there needs to be a more universal pathway for young people to look at their opportunities and options if mainstream education is no longer an option for them due to mental health or other barriers, including poverty. So many children and young people at that age feel, due to constraints related to poverty, that they have to leave education because they need to join the workforce to try to have an income. That needs to be looked at.

This is a very vulnerable age cohort. If they leave school, they are very vulnerable to criminality and being groomed into criminality. That is definitely on the rise in communities. The Garda youth diversion programmes are there but we need more gardaí on the ground, supporting in community-based roles to try to build rapport and trust with these young people to try to prevent their being groomed into these criminal actions. It is the temptation of having money coming in, being able to have the lavish lifestyles they see on social media, as my colleague mentioned earlier. It is a real-life issue for very vulnerable communities where the deprivation index is extremely high.

I thank the Senator. It falls to me now and we will go for a second round. We have the ever-enthusiastic Deputy Ó Murchú ready to go again.

I am going to talk about the UNCRC. Ms Jennings brought up the issue and I am sure it was referenced in other ways. I attended a youth event run by the Ombudsman and the children were engaged in learning about their rights. There were some really good youth advocates there. Different community leaders had brought them and they did some sessions together and some separately. In the panel discussion with the youth leaders, there was a group from Scotland, which has fully implemented the UNCRC. There were many questions about whether, if it were to be fully implemented here, it would make any changes on the ground. People moved to one side of the room or the other based on how much they agreed with the question. The Scots said that right now, it has not made changes on the ground but it had made their ability to lobby for what they need that bit better. What do the witnesses think? It is high time we implemented the UNCRC. We have been waiting for many years. What difference would it make to the witnesses as they do their jobs on the ground? We know there is a backlog for assessments of need. Many cases have been taken against the State, but that has not alleviated the problem. If we implement the UNCRC, which we need to do, what are the witnesses' thoughts about what the immediate changes on the ground would mean to them, day to day? I will start with Ms Jennings and others might indicate.

I thank the Cathaoirleach. Sometimes a legislative change can have an immediate impact and sometimes it takes a lot longer. I will give one particular example related to the Harmful Communications and Related Offences Act 2020. It specifically addressed a particular online harm of intimate image abuse. When we put laws in place, it sets down a parameter for what is acceptable and not acceptable, and what we strive for, particularly in the area of rights. That legislation alone has seen many who were victims of that particular crime come forward. It has created awareness and brought in the requisite services and policies, etc., that are needed to address it. That legislation has been incredibly positive.

Something like the UNCRC would absolutely set down a marker for how we, as a country, view children and young people. We often talk about it. I absolutely agree with what Dr. McDonnell said. Throwing money at the problem is one part of it, but it is about asking what we are spending money on and how we are spending it. Are we really evaluating what we are doing? Ms Power works in services. My side of the house is policy and public affairs. Having the UNCRC in our domestic legislation would give us massive leverage in terms of advocating for what we actually need for children and young people, and, in turn, that would influence the Government because it would have to reflect that in public and social policy. I think it would be an absolute game-changer. We are looking to Scotland to see how it is getting on.

It was wonderful to have the Scots at that event to share. Does anyone else want to come in?

It would be absolutely fantastic to have that legislation. We have a good history of civil rights and activism and something like the UNCRC would encourage people to get involved at a grassroots level. We would absolutely welcome it.

Articles 27 and 28 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child relate to living standards and education. We spoke about the safe base that all young people need to start off their lives. Will it be implemented and followed through? I do not know. However, children need that to start their lives.

Another interesting article is Article 12. We already do it. The article relates to the right for the child's voice to be heard. Everything that we do is led by the children. We ask if this is working for them. We ask where they need to go in life. We are not giving them a service and doing it to them. We are doing it for and with them. We are already trying to cover up for society not implementing these changes. We go in and advocate with the councils for appropriate living standards all the time. We go in and fight with the Department of education for not having services for our children. On the ground, we are fighting against everything. It takes up a lot of time and energy that we could use working with families and the real problems they are experiencing.

I would love to see the impact for children and families living in emergency and homeless accommodation.

We are seeing a huge impact on families, coming from war-torn countries and in existing emergency accommodation refuges. We are seeing that children do not have a chance to develop normally. We have three-year-olds who have not yet developed the skills to walk because they do not have access to the facilities to develop properly. We need the voices of these children to be heard as much as anybody else but it is a huge issue for us.

I had some constituents come into me who were at real risk of homelessness. I heard different stories about one of the emergency accommodation centres nearby, so I said I would visit it myself. I was really happy with how secure, safe and warm it was, the good cooking facilities, the washing machine schedule and secure presses for people to keep their food. When I got to the playroom, it was really lacking and small. I looked in the garden, which is overgrown with bushes everywhere, and it is not safe to play in. Maslow's hierarchy contains shelter, warmth and security, but for children, play is foundational.

I wanted to follow up on what was being said. Some 15% to 20% of our child and adolescent population experience anxiety but it is not simply anxiety. It is anxiety on a level where, if it was measured by the medical and clinical standards of the 1960s, they would be institutionalised. It is an epidemic. Some 12% of our child and adolescent population experience depression. There is something about the environment in which we are raising our children that gives rise to these concerns. Giving them an opportunity to speak, participate and take part in the daily lives of their communities is a vital step in providing for their mental health. It is not simply about listening to what they say, but giving them opportunities to directly, actively participate.

In the north inner city, we are working with a population in which it is criminogenic. The reality of those situation is that every one of those children, if given an opportunity, will take it and engage positively with the services that are being made available. It is just that the services are not being made available. That population has a level of anxiety and depression that is higher than the national level of anxiety and depression, yet we simply do not offer them solutions or clinical supports to help them to address the difficulties. This legislation would introduce the idea of a child's voice having a part to play in how society runs into the fabric of how we approach things.

We will move to the second round and I will come back to Deputies, so I am not abusing my time.

Does the Cathaoirleach want to continue? We have enough time.

Fantastic. Go ahead, Ms Power.

I wanted to go back to the Cathaoirleach's point about the emergency accommodation she visited, which was mentioned by our colleagues too. In anticipation of this meeting, we met to identify recommendations. One of those was appropriate play spaces. We mentioned earlier that children are simply not meeting their developmental milestones. That has a knock-on effect on their ability to engage their peers, access education and, longer term, right into adulthood.

Our colleagues mentioned earlier the idea of privatisation in the sector. It is a massive concern. Hotels and other private accommodation providers are being paid massive sums. I question the responsibility and the onus on them to ensure that adequate amenities are provided for these children when they are being paid and funded by the State, with a considerable amount. We as an organisation would recommend that any privately-funded accommodation provider for these very vulnerable families should, as a condition to their funding being provided, be required to provide not a specific purpose-built facility because that is obviously not feasible, but somewhere where children can explore the world around them, play with their peers, and really learn how to engage with the world around them in a positive, safe space. That needs to be a bare minimum if this funding model is going to continue to private providers.

I absolutely agree with all that Ms Power said. With the parents in that situation, part of what needs to be done relates to the frame of mind of the parents. The Cathaoirleach talked about the hierarchy of needs. Many of these families are traumatised and they are not recognising that play is how children make sense of the world and grow and develop. Work needs to be done by the centre, with the parents, on the importance of play. It is not just about providing a play space but structured activities. At our local centre, there are outdoor parks, green spaces and a play park, but there is not a lot of structure. When people visit, many of the children are still indoors, on screens or doing whatever inside the house, so there is not any structured play going on. It is important that, as well as providing the space, the centre provides support to parents, to create that level of awareness and see what supports the parents need to think about their children's needs.

I do a lot of work on online safety. I can see in a household that is an affluent area and has all the toys in the world that screentime can still be a difficulty, as can keeping children safe online. When I look at a congregated setting or at emergency accommodation where there is not that space to play, there is no choice but to stay on screens for longer.

I agree with what my colleagues said about the importance of play for children. In emergency accommodation services, whether international protection or homeless hubs, as part of my ABC programme, we run groups in some of the IPAS centres in the area. That is co-ordinated by a trained early childhood professional who supports that. It has a huge impact on the service, on the staff who are there, providing services within the accommodation, but also the families and how they view their lives and quality of life. It enables them to be linked in with the community. While we run them in the services, other supports are run throughout the areas that the community and voluntary sector work in. They can be brought out and involved in other services. While they might start out going to one group, they are able to make connections and links and go to other services and out and about. That is a significant element of the home visiting programmes. The trusted relationship that people will have with a home visitor enables them to make all those connections, so it is not just within the service. They can access services in other areas too.

For all of those providers who are providing homeless accommodation, it is important for those staff to have trauma-informed care training, because we often hear that that is not the case, and they are all dealing with families who are in high-need, high-risk, fight-or-flight situations, and they are not recognising the trauma that those families are experiencing.

People have detailed the very specific issues that are caused by the housing crisis and children in inappropriate settings, and sometimes relying on the private sector and people making money off what is an inadequate service. We are back to the same thing. The witnesses spoke earlier about home visits. The idea of a specialist public health nurse was brought up to us. On some level, it does not matter. It is somebody who is in to deal with families who is safe and trusted, and can refer, but there is not much point in referring unless the service is in place. The witnesses have all spoken about the fact that everybody is keeping the engine going with baling twine.

I was taken by what Dr. McDonnell said earlier about dealing with the fourth generation. I do not buy that it is failure because there is an element of harm reduction sometimes and sometimes that is the best we can do. If we were really serious, we would do something differently. Some families do not need a huge level of support but will create bad scenarios if that is not done, but there are complex cases that can be addressed at an early stage, though some cannot be. There are times when I would have liked to see the nuclear option taken earlier where kids have been left in really unsafe, bad settings, in a really bad place. I ask Dr. McDonnell to elaborate on it. On some level, it is a continuity on the other. He has stated what needs to be done. I will start with Mr. Coughlan and Dr. McDonnell.

I suppose-----

And, because, I really love interrupting people, how do we get down to a needs analysis and have a real conversation about what we need and do not need across the board?

I get that the need is far greater in disadvantaged areas. That is where you are going to deal with the issue. In some cases, you will even deal with what people previously called “the good granny”. Now, however, that is someone who has a benzo issue and is not able to help you.

To give an example, families with whom we are working were moved out of one area due a Garda information message, GIM, being on them. They were moved into another area with worse problems. It just highlights the issue. Why was one Department not talking to the other Department? Probably three statutory bodies knew all the information and they could have avoided the whole situation. Those children ended back in Oberstown. All of that could have been avoided if all of the Departments came together, sat down around the table and crisis-managed the situation rather than Departments dealing with issues in silos. GDPR is a big concern in this regard because information is not shared that could help make better-informed decisions to avoid more trauma happening to young people and families.

It is hopelessness that keeps people. Within demographically disadvantaged and severely deprived communities, there is a strong sense of hopelessness. Whatever potential options we make available to the families, they are of the opinion, over time, that these options are not for them and the opportunities will not succeed. They do not believe in this idea of flourishing and thriving. We have to recognise that this is the starting point for these families and break that cycle.

Early intervention has proven itself to be extraordinarily effective so long as it is evidence-based and informed and we can stand over the cost involved in it. These families suffer from a burden of hopelessness that literally captures and freezes them in place. Our job, as practitioners and clinicians, is to ensure that we can unfreeze their feet so that they can make the best of the opportunities we make available to them. Ultimately, this generation of kids is seemingly no more resilient than the generations before. That is something we have to address because it is the resilience that gives the child the opportunity to look up and recognise the priorities that will prove effective for them. It is about being strategic but we must also recognise that while this is a complex issue, we are talking about how people view their world. For some people, their world is very immediate.

How do we deal with that?

To follow on from Dr. McDonnell's point, we work in areas that are described as disadvantaged. That is a fact in terms of education, income and stuff like that but the reality is that the communities we work in are filled with people who are talented and gifted but they just do not have opportunities. While the State invests equally in education for people and whatever, it is people from wealthier families who get ahead in life because they have much more investment coming into them from their families in terms of opportunities that families-----

With resources, you can make better decisions, and you will make better decisions anyway.

100%. With support, we can encourage people to take positive risk. People in our communities are taking risks every day in the environments they are navigating through, so the capability is there. It is about having the opportunity to take positive risk and having someone to walk with them-----

And a belief.

Yes, a belief. To speak about my family experience and where my family grew up, I have nephews and nieces who are 20 years younger than me. I assumed they would go on to college and third level, but they did not. It was not because their parents did not have the ambition for them to do that but, rather, their peers did not have that ambition. Their horizon was often limited by what they saw around them. Our job is to lift people's heads and tell them that we believe in them. In our company, we regularly meet people who are coming to us looking for any sort of job. We are telling them that we do not want them to just get any job. Rather, we believe in them and we try to get-----

Northside Partnership goes beyond early intervention. It creates-----

We work in a much wider context, yes. We work across a whole life cycle of people. For example, people are sent to us from the Department of Social Protection who are, maybe, long-term unemployed. We are trying to move people into the labour market and into higher paid employment. All of those aspects are needed when it comes to supporting people and families who are at risk of poverty.

The thing is that – it touches on Dr. McDonnell's point - if we do not address poverty, we are only fuelling the next generation. We are already in that space if we do not help to lift people out. In the context of signing up to the UNCRC, our Constitution says we believe and invest in our children. We do not need another piece of international legislation to tell us that because it is in the Constitution. If we really believe in it, let us invest in it because poverty will undermine our democracy. We saw the effects of that in Coolock last year.

Last month on the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, the ABC Programme hosted a webinar on child poverty. One of the things we heard is that poverty is not a natural phenomenon; it is man-made by policies at a local, national and international level. Two years ago, I attended the child poverty summit the then Taoiseach and current Tánaiste, Deputy Simon Harris, hosted in Dublin Castle. At the summit, Mr. Gordon Brown spoke about the Sure Start programme in the UK and the impact it had. In Katriona O'Sullivan’s book, Poor, she talks about the difference between being “poor” and “poor poor”,-----

We spoke about her.

-----having no access to supports and services and the importance of the Sure Start programme in the UK back then. The progressive, universal approach was the secret sauce behind it. It was targeted at the communities that needed it the most. If we want to talk about poverty, we need to put the resources where they need to go. We need to openly say that there is a problem with poverty in some areas and we need to target those areas. We are an area-based programme and there is a reason we are in these areas of high deprivation and disadvantage. We are the resources that are there to address poverty and child poverty in those areas. There are 12 of us in the country. The area I cover at the minute is County Louth. There are 111 areas of deprivation and disadvantage throughout County Louth.

Mr. McGee will know that, sometimes, it is worse street by street because of that idea of demographic change. At times, there is just an unhealthy peer who can make it very difficult for everybody living there.

To go back to the point earlier about the rural and urban divide, we are trying to target areas of deprivation and poverty in both rural and urban areas at the same time. The reality is-----

You are stretched.

-----it costs more to go to rural areas. We have a home visiting programme that has to try to cover the whole of north Louth, which includes some 65,000 people in Dundalk and also the Carlingford, Omeath and Ardee areas. We have two part-time home visitors. There is no way we are going to be able to touch that. The reality is-----

We are only playing at it.

Yes. We need to put more funding, resources and allocation into the areas that need them more. That is the progressive, universal approach.

We were talking about childcare. A huge thing is the lack of childcare places. This is an opportunity to say that we need universal childcare, that is, the same for every child. Just as children are entitled to primary education, the State should be providing universal childcare across the board because childcare places are almost non-existent.

I welcome initiatives such as the equal start programme in May 2024, the home visits under the community mothers programme and the plan, hopefully, for a new DEIS plus programme, which will be hugely important. That needs to move fast.

This summer, we were involved in a pilot project to continue the school meals programme through the youth organisations so that hot meals continued to be provided. It was a pilot project this summer and the youth organisations did it together. It was very effective because, the previous year, parents came to me explaining that they really missed the food when the schools were closed. It is about extending that pilot project. We got 50 for 50 families in all of Dundalk this summer. We had 15 in our area, which was nothing compared to what was needed. It is about things like that. In one sense, such programmes do not get at the root cause of poverty, but some sort of relief still has to be provided.

If you are not getting fed, you do not have much opportunity.

Yes. The last thing I wish to say is something which Mr. McGee also talked about it. I am from the community and voluntary sector so I cannot nearly get away from it, but it has been hugely underfunded and undervalued. The whole thing of having a supportive adult who will journey with a family or young person is immense. It is so important.

On my way in I bumped into Deputy Ó Murchú's party colleague. We worked together on an initiative in County Mayo. I told her that my colleagues and I had come here to attend a meeting of this committee and we had a very brief conversation about hope. It is really special that the community and voluntary sector offers communities, on the ground, the idea of hope where they see an alternative future for themselves and, in turn, that can build resilience. Deputy Ruairí Ó Murchú asked about needs analysis.

Yes.

I wonder whether we have a proper needs analysis in terms of what early intervention can truly offer. I know this not the committee that deals with mental health issues but it is a separate piece of work that the ISPCC, along with other colleagues providing mental health services, is doing at the moment, which shows that true value or return on investment in prevention and early intervention mental health supports versus when children are downstream and the cost of that provision. Something like that, specifically focused on child poverty, may focus minds as well.

I apologise for being late but it has been one of those mornings. I am the chairperson of a family resource centre in Monaghan town. The Deputy has asked the big question as to what the answers are and I suggest that there is no magic bullet. I agree with some of the members who have spoken here that our work is certainly about providing hope. The Teach na nDaoine Family Resource Centre has been based in a marginalised community for over 20 years. We welcome the fact that the Minister has extended the programme next year for another ten FRCs. That is just one example of funding. It is really about investment, but investing in what works.

Yes.

Sometimes very simple things have worked over the years. One thing that is not simple, which was mentioned earlier, is children living in direct provision. I wear another hat as I am part of the integration committee and I think there is a fundamental flaw in how we manage those contracts in regard to the service that a private provider can supply. We are certainly trying to cobble together a project that would have a childcare facility within direct provision. That is not the ideal solution but it is better than what is currently not there, so it is about that kind of resistance. It would help if things like were written into contracts.

I am thinking about our journey over the last 20 years. Certainly, I have worked with significant members of the Traveller community, with all the marginalisation and exclusion faced by that community, and I am looking at things that worked then. For example, the double social welfare payment existed for a short period, which resulted in the fact that members of the Traveller community, and mostly ladies unfortunately, went through the process and ended up in employment, and still today are in employment. There are initiatives that can work and we do not have to reinvent the wheel. We need to also consider the issue of poverty-proofing everything that we do.

We are talking about the rural divide and I will give my opinions on a few things that we could do to alleviate child poverty. When we talk about childcare, I understand exactly where the witnesses are coming from. In Scotland, the model of childcare is based on a local authority improving staff's skill levels throughout and retention is good, thus allowing parents to work and prevent child poverty, which is not happening now. One quick example in the private sector is a childcare centre located where I am based which had a waiting list ten years ago of 40 and it is now 186. When I was told this, I asked what can be done. The staff of the childcare centre told me they were absolutely stuck. Those 186 children on the waiting list represents 186 families who have the potential to experience some form of child poverty because, unfortunately, with the way life is at the moment, everybody has to work as we are in a cost-of-living crisis.

These little measures are vital for us as we move forward. I ask Ms Deeney and Mr. Kelly to outline their experience of rural areas and to state what needs to be done. I understand why Mr. McGee said it is more expensive. Donegal, in particular, is geographically isolated and, as we all know, we have a defective crisis going on and thousands of families with children are involved in this. Karen Kirby conducted a study, which University of Ulster released, that basically says suicidal ideation among children has rocketed above the national average. II want to get a glimpse of this from Ms Deeney, Mr. Kelly, Mr. McGree and whoever else.

The issue for us in Monaghan with the early stages of the pilot scheme is that there are some indications that will be no surprise to anyone here. Families are facing the cost-of-living crisis and rising energy bills. The additional costs faced by everybody compound the issue. For members, particularly those in Monaghan, it will come as no surprise to people who know the county that there is a weaker community infrastructure in the south of the county than in the north of the county, for which a new family resource centre is due to be developed and that and will go some of the way. However, the issues of rural transport, the lack of access to services and stuff like that in rural communities are unfortunately alive and well, which adds to further difficulties and drives people into poverty. Those are the key issues that we have encountered in the very early stages of the pilot scheme. One wonders at times why we need a survey to highlight poverty needs in Monaghan because we currently run a foodbank which is availed of by 35 families a week. I am sure if we widely advertised our foodbank, then we would have more families availing of it. Unfortunately, poverty is alive and well in rural communities.

There is rural isolation because, although we have Local Link services, we do not have transport infrastructure. People's houses are in very isolated locations and, across the countryside, two thirds are not based around local towns.

In terms of the things introduced, we have introduced the Planet Youth, which is an Icelandic model. We have linked with some of the local schools to provide after-school activities through CYPSC programme costs and Healthy Ireland programme funding. We have worked with the Cavan and Monaghan Education and Training Board around that as well. The CMETB has a panel of facilitators. The model used is one whereby the school opens up its premises once the schoolday finishes and after-school activities are provided by a local youth facilitator, along with a facilitator who is paid from that funding. The model has been successful. Sometimes, we try to get families to carpool because there is no transport home. The thinking behind the idea of carpooling is that once families carpool together, they will get to know each other's children, which is an aspect that was highlighted by our survey of young people. The creation of these opportunities makes available free activities for children and young people. We are lucky that there are a lot of GAA clubs in the area but all of these different clubs come with different costs, and that is the first thing that will go. This morning, the ESRI published a report that mentioned the lack of opportunity for after-school activities. The policy could be expanded to include the introduction of after-school activities. In Iceland, all young people receive a leisure time card and they choose the best way to avail of the scheme, and introducing such a card here would be a fantastic idea.

Childcare services are absolutely critical for employment opportunities and providing space to ensure gender equality in employment. For us, as well as childcare for parents, we are most focused on providing early education for children.

In those first three years of life it is absolutely critical for early brain development if children can acquire some of those basic skills. It puts them on a path to lifelong learning and education. It is about looking at childcare as a high-quality early education rather than simply a place to look after a child while the parents are at work. This means having the appropriate resources, the appropriate space, well-designed learning environments for those children, and a system that is led by the child and supported by highly trained, educated and well-supported educators.

In the communities we are working with, most of the staff are coming from the community and have 20 years' experience of working with children. They are really expert, experienced and well trained. Obviously, we want to see a professionalisation of the system but the funding system is working towards actually being dependent on the qualifications that educators have: if the staff have higher qualifications, the crèche gets paid more. This is certainly supporting a move towards professionalisation, and I think early educators are professional teachers and they need to be treated as such, but at the same time, we have people from the local community who have been there for 20 years and that education, training and experience need to be valued as well and, consequently, funded. A lot of the organisations and early years education centres we work with will support staff to get their degrees and move on in further education, but as soon as they get their degrees, they move on to management roles somewhere else, taking that experience out of that organisation.

If we are really interested in supporting children, one of the biggest returns on investment in early intervention is through good-quality early education.

We will go to Deputy Bennett, then myself and then the two Deputies, whom I will give three minutes each, if that is okay. Then we will do a one-minute round up for every organisation, if that is agreeable. Deputy Bennett has seven minutes.

I am very thankful to the Cathaoirleach for letting me in today. I am actually on the Committee of Public Accounts in the next-door committee room, so I am running between events today.

I thank everyone who has come in today. I thank them for their work on children and equality. It is very important to recognise the need for equality. I especially thank my fellow Monaghan citizens, Mr. Packie Kelly and Ms Collette Deeney, for coming in today and for the work they have been doing in Monaghan. It is extraordinary. We have Teach na nDaoine in Monaghan, which is a family resource centre in north Monaghan. We are also trying to acquire a family resource centre in the south of the county too. This is very important because, believe it or not, there are a lot of families out there who need support in this day and age. It is vital that every county would have those resources put in place. I also commend Mr. Kelly and Ms Deeney on the interagency action plan they have put forward. The families out there they will be helping in County Monaghan are very thankful for that resource.

I was at a meeting in the resource centre in Monaghan recently. I know a lot of families actually find it very hard to admit that they are in poverty. I would like to see some other measures put in place that would help families get that support. It is a brilliant service that Ms Deeney and Mr. Kelly provide but a lot of families do not want to actually admit that they are struggling. I do not know how we get to that stage where we can help people admit they need help so that they are able to put food on the table. I hear from parents that they are feeding their children and not feeding themselves because they do not have the resources to do it. Maybe that is just another idea.

I would like to bring to the childcare committee's attention that it has been brought to my attention by childcare organisations that the new pension auto-enrolment scheme will put the prices up for crèches and childcare facilities. I ask that the childcare committee here would consider additional resources being provided for childcare facilities and community childcare services to compensate them. Childcare facilities are already struggling and these parents are already in debt and struggling to feed their children. Are they now going to have to put extra resources into childcare? Will the Government consider allocating additional money to childcare facilities to ensure that children are able to avail of childcare and parents can go to work to ensure their children are not in poverty?

I commend all the witnesses for their work in relation to childcare, children and child poverty to ensure that children are not in poverty. I do not believe that children should be in poverty in this day and age. If children are not looked after at an early age and the resources are not put in place when they are very young, it leads to a very hard life.

I thank the Cathaoirleach for letting me speak. Well done to the witnesses for coming up today.

I thank Deputy Bennett. I will speak for three minutes and then we will go to Deputies Ó Murchú and Ward. We will then finish with one-minute closing statements.

In some of the sentences and phrases a number of the witnesses used earlier, I heard "dumping ground", concerns over child protection as regards increased referrals, etc. Mr. Kelly spoke about the family resource centres and all the different services they provide. I was at the 21st anniversary of the Westport Family and Community Resource Centre last week, which is a fantastic achievement. The people there talked about it being the thread that wove together the silos of the different Departments. That has come up a number of times. It seems there are fantastic organisations and community volunteer organisations doing really good work on the ground but would it not be better if it was one? For example, we have Tusla and then we have all these different organisations doing really good work. We also have pilot programmes, but I am wondering whether all of these fragmented community volunteer organisations that are doing similar things should come under one kind of a roadmap. Some of the witnesses are running a pilot. Are there other plans for that pilot? I was in a pilot school for nine years and at the end of the pilot programme, the school was closed and nobody had ever said whether the pilot was a success. Are we trying to reinvent the wheel all the time by having all these fantastic organisations doing fantastic work but all struggling with the fact that there are silos between Departments? What would be the best approach? Dr. McDonnell talked about strategic thinking but in terms of long-term strategic thinking, what is the best? Is it these community volunteer organisations running their own groups in their own way while co-ordinating with one another? What groups are experiencing in Monaghan might be very different to what they are experiencing in Westport and so on. I know this is a very broad question but Dr. McDonnell challenged us to think strategically.

For family resource centres, it is a challenging environment. How do we manage that and navigate all of the agencies that can be involved? With our partners in Tusla, we take the view in Monaghan that ours is a wee business. We have a positive relationship with Tusla that bears some success for families. At the same time, we do not get everything right either and sometimes the cases are very complex and have to go into the social work system. The FRCs are undoubtedly one model that could be looked at. There are other models that could do it as well, some of which are in the room here today. There are vehicles for that. However, there is a wider question for the Government. Is the Government willing to do it? It is a wee bit easier for us in Monaghan to say that our work, particularly with our partners in Tusla, is a wee business because we have spent time developing that relationship. I am very aware that, in other parts of the country, it is not as positive an experience for many. It is about relationship building.

Where did the fundamental flaw come into place? I think the fundamental flaw came into place when the agency was set up, particularly Tusla, and it brought in the family resource centre programme.

There were two different cultures of how we engage with families. Time was not spent on how those two cultures would come together; it was about getting the agency up and running and getting it out on the ground. I said to the previous CEO some time ago about that colliding of cultures - because the community culture is very different from services - that time was not spent on blending that together.

On that umbrella and oversight of all the different initiatives that are happening on the ground, there are 27 children and young people's services across the country. They are made up of the community, voluntary and statutory representations of all the managers involved with children and young people. It is a good forum for that strategic planning on the ground. There is a subgroup set up on each of the five different national outcomes. In my head that is a logical way to progress things. There are a number of issues we are all working on at times but there are other things that are perhaps more prevalent in some counties, so there is a bit of flexibility on developing your workplan around your issues.

On knitting together different agencies, there have been talks about the local community development committees, LCDCs, and the CYPSCs developing their plans so they run alongside each other. There could be opportunity there for joint commissioning of services and people pooling their resources on the ground. In Monaghan we have quite good interagency working but maybe it is at the higher levels of government when we are talking about joint commissioning and people pooling resources there or committing to providing that support for projects and project workers so you are not losing good people yearly who are going off to do something because there is no secure funding for them to remain in place. Finally, our pilot is going to be evaluated by the University of Limerick. That is happening in December 2026. As well as that, we have entered as a partner to the centre for effective services in a cross-Border project which is looking at collaborative leadership across the Border. That will be running for 40 months as well. I am not sure if we will get an extension. I would imagine not for nine years anyway.

On the strategic thinking, the Cathaoirleach is right that we are reinventing the wheel to a large extent. There are different examples at a more senior kind of national level of where commissioning is carried out under one agency for community and voluntary sector to stop that conflict of interest that happens at a departmental level where obviously you are always going to have to fund the tertiary services far more adequately than the community and voluntary sector and the prevention and early intervention sector. We can learn from situations like there was with Glasgow City Council, which apportioned a percentage of the budget for the third sector and community and voluntary sector to guarantee it met the demands of the community areas there was work in. It was far more effective in terms of outputs and far more cost-effective in terms of what reach it had as well. There are elements out there we can learn from that are proven and evidence-based, if there was one agency or sector we all reported to.

What Mr. McGee is talking about is some sort of overall body without everybody being contained within. I have often said there are huge issues that need to be dealt with in Tusla and we will be dealing with some of them here next week. That goes without saying. In relation to it or any organisation in the community and voluntary sector or wherever that it refers to, you could not deal with the issues out there at the moment and the complexity of them. I accept the issue in hard to reach rural communities and all the rest of it, but there is a real problem in big urban settings, disadvantaged settings. That is where we have the real problems that have gone on for generations. Like Dr. McDonnell said earlier, we have not impacted sufficiently on them. I will not ask the same questions again because we know what the problem is and we have seen enough evidence-based projects that have worked, enough pilots that have been stretched and we just need to do this in a better way and a bigger way and we need to do it in the areas where it is required.

I will ask about some very specific pieces. There is the early intervention piece and there is the chaotic intervention piece that Archways would deal with. There is the youth diversion piece as well. I ask some of the witnesses to speak to that. I imagine they have nowhere near the resources they require for dealing with those sorts of cases.

I spoke to it briefly earlier and gave an example. The community we are working in is I think 50 years old and we talk about four generations. We were given a three-year pilot to fix those 50 years.

Strangely it did not work.

Yes. Obviously an extension and long term funding is needed to solve these complex problems. The Deputy is 100% correct it is getting worse. I was watching Tusla. It is building more residential units, paying for more special care arrangements and looking for staff from overseas for special care units. Why are we not putting that money into the community programmes to stop the young people getting there in the first place? It is similar with Oberstown. I think they are looking at building another unit because that is going to be full, whereas we need to be putting money into the intensive programmes. Even if we put in everything here there will be some people who end up with intensive services like what we run and that is okay, provided the services are there to support them. Otherwise they are just on a one-way path to alternative care.

Mr. Coughlan already said integrated services but he has to go out and fight for ancillary.

We talked about networks a while ago. We set up a pilot. There were several services involved with the young people who were getting referred to us.

I imagine they are being referred a lot younger than was happening even five to ten years ago.

Yes. I think the youngest we have currently is ten. We set up a justice network with Tusla, EWOs, the Garda, Garda diversion, etc., because we were all working with the same young people. It was going really well. It was like a community of practice sharing information. The issue we ran into was the higher level. My organisation says this and then someone says they cannot get by the bureaucracy of their organisation to do this, so there was a ceiling on the work we could do within that, but we need to take that model and put it into Government Departments.

Then allow the flexibility in the system to deliver for the people who require it. Ms O'Mahony?

Do you want to come in, Ms O'Mahony?

Sorry, I overstepped my remit.

Not at all.

I do that occasionally.

Very quickly, in relation to what was said about interagency, the CYPSC model is excellent and we work very closely with CYPSC. I am on the board. We have good interagency. On what the Deputy was saying, I am thinking of what Mr. Kelly said about the community culture being a very different culture to the strategy services. You cannot erode either but it is about working together. We have funding through Tusla for a family support project we called the north Dundalk family support hub. Referrals are pathwayed for family support from PPFS and Tusla, but the idea was we would also have space for community referrals, which we still do, or people coming in the door looking for support. More and more, because waiting lists are so long and there are so many referrals into Tusla, we have nearly all Tusla referrals now that have been pathwayed. We are trying to redress that. We were hoping to address it through an FRC, which we got knocked back for, but anyway.

It could be revisited.

It could be revisited. On what the Deputy was saying about youth diversion and all that, in recent years there has been huge investment, I have to say, from the Department of justice, especially in the youth diversion field and the early intervention. Now you have core, early intervention and you have family support.

At what age is that early intervention?

It is nine to 12 years, because the age of criminal responsibility is 12. It is nine to 12 years, or nine to 11.

It is a game-changer for Ms O'Mahony's project. The other project in Muirhevnamor would also say it has made a huge impact.

A garda told me there were families where everybody had consistently fallen into crime and in some cases the next generation had not because the issue was dealt with earlier. There is no point looking at a 15- or 16-year-old-----

They are already entrenched in crime.

At that stage, if they are at it, they are at it.

You still have to do the other as well. For example, last year we asked for an additional ten hours for what the youth diversion calls the harder to reach programmes, because they are there too, but we got knocked back on that. It just needs additional resources.

The other issue is that things change. For the previous CYPSC plan a while back, we had an interagency group. We had a subgroup of the CYPSC for adolescents at risk. We got all the key actors together with the community - Tusla, the Probation Service, An Garda Síochána and the EWOs - and we picked eight of the most at-risk adolescents in County Louth. It was really a case management thing, with everybody working together, but it was really effective. Then it went because meitheal started and it was to be the panacea and the answer to all of this and-----

It was not.

No. That is just to give an example of some of the interagency stuff.

Unfortunately, none of this is shocking.

We will go to Ms Jennings and then to Deputy Charles Ward.

I will defer to my colleague Ms Power if that is okay because I am just nodding at everything Ms O'Mahony is saying. Those experiences are absolutely reflected in what we see as well. Increasingly, we are taking more and more referrals from statutory organisations versus the community. I think Ms Power wanted to talk about the chaotic piece.

Yes, exactly. To touch on what was mentioned there, we do have good frameworks in the community, voluntary and statutory sectors that are proven to work well. I am very hopeful and optimistic, amid the Tusla reform that is coming up, and the HSE is also looking to do the same, that what is working will remain in place and we can retain it. I am thinking about that interagency piece. We do not just work in Dublin; we work all over the country in multiple counties. We are a massive part of it, with the CYPSC and the child and family support networks as well. They have had a massive impact on the ground.

Avoiding duplication is also key. We are all striving to try to utilise the funds we have in the best possible way. For example, social work departments have a key mechanism, the core meetings where funded services will meet with social workers to discuss what is required for certain cases involving specific children and families. That is a mechanism that works extremely well. I cover multiple counties in my role and I would love to see it replicated in every county because it is not. It is done in one of the counties I cover but not the others. I would love to see that done nationally. It is a wraparound service for avoiding children slipping through the cracks, for child protection and for overall effectiveness in how we are able to support children. You might have one child who needs therapeutic support from our service but then the parents may need a parenting piece as well. We want to ensure we take a holistic view of the family and not a siloed approach. That interagency piece is key.

Going back to Deputy Ward's point on rural Ireland. As I mentioned, we work nationally in many different counties. One of our main services is a mobile therapeutic support service. We go out and meet the children and families in their homes, schools, community spaces, or wherever they feel comfortable. That is a massive success in terms of meeting children where they are at and being able to get in on the ground and work with them directly to make meaningful change and enhance and build their resilience.

What I think needs to be looked at, and what we as an organisation have looked at, is trying to innovate in how we provide that service. That was done through our e-support pilot during Covid where everything had to be adapted. We had to go from face-to-face to online service delivery and that was independently evaluated. We are looking to enhance that. More innovation needs to be provided in terms of how we meet children. We spoke a lot about the cost of trying to get out to rural Ireland and meet families who live in very isolated communities. That is a solution that is available. We need to try to innovate, particularly in terms of intergenerational poverty.

We look at education as the key. Families cannot access education if they have barriers such as transport. For many families, the cost of going to the local college is an immediate barrier. We need to innovate in terms of how they can access education and asking if there is a community-based option or an online option like the Open University. There are so many things we could do to make meaningful change and to look at that interagency and intergenerational piece as well.

When we round up, I ask that speakers to keep to one minute to ensure we conclude on time.

I have a quick question for Dr. McDonnell. He referred to the generational breaches of family trust and the families on the ground who have been basically failed by workers for generations. Does he believe, going forward, that if training was done to such a high standard that we would have specialised persons or units that would go in and try to interact with these families, it would be possible to make a difference?

That is what we are doing in the area. It is a well-publicised area. The project itself is subject to some concerns around how much we can or cannot say. It has been the subject of evaluation. We are using very definite therapeutic models designed to address both criminogenic and psychodynamic concerns. All of our evaluations to date are suggesting that these programmes work.

Mr. Coughlan mentioned earlier, and I would stress this point, that we have ten- and 11-year-olds who are not simply at risk of being involved in criminal activity but who are actively involved in it. Therefore, a therapeutic model that works with a team of people who have established the trust of the people on the ground is the only thing that will work. We can talk about improving school access but the reality is we are talking about a population here which is extraordinarily at risk and, technically, extraordinary riskful to the communities within which they live. The only way to deal with those populations is to have very targeted psychotherapeutic models with highly trained professionals.

I am conscious of time. Mr. McGee spoke about the funding of a system if he had a magic wand. He referred to the Glasgow system of funding. Will he comment on that?

I went on a site visit, as part of an EU-funded programme, to Glasgow to look at its commissioning system of early intervention and prevention. Essentially, what they did is they got a financial analyst in to look at what percentage of the council funding was required to sustain the community, voluntary and third sector to work within the community in a way that ensured it was not impacted by the statutory services. They arrived at a figure, a percentage, and the council allocated that. It was a very unpopular political decision within the Glasgow City Council but it did it and it guaranteed multi-annual funding for each of the different services, plus a return in terms of impact.

Is Mr. McGee aware of whether it has had an impact?

I was talking to the council a couple of years ago and it had had an impact. A guy called Mike Burns was the CEO of the council at the time and he came over and presented the findings to the Tusla national PPFS conference at the time as a recommended way that we could move forward.

I do not mind who makes the closing remarks of one minute each but perhaps either Mr. Kelly or Ms Deeney will start.

I thank the Cathaoirleach. One of the things that has been going through my head this morning is the importance of the trauma-informed approach and to have all our front-facing services be trained in it. I have taken the point that families have had a bad experience in the past and how we get them back in the door again. All those who are delivering services or supports need to be trauma-informed. If we could do blanket training on that, it would be fantastic.

Lifestart and all the different home-visiting programmes are crucial. Once people are in the door of a house and building up the trust, they might hear about something else going on. It is about having all that early intervention. It takes time to build up trust with families for them to admit they may need support in another area.

Within that resource, they can do signposting to other supports there. I would also reiterate the importance of the one good adult, whether that be for the child or the entire family.

The community and voluntary sector in Ireland is an incredible resource and I do not think it is probably utilised effectively by the State because of the environment that we work in. We should work in partnership and that has been eroded over the years. I would be calling for greater sectoral investment and a more stable and sustainable funding model, creating and enabling an environment that recognises the value of the trust we have with the communities. We are on the front line on the ground in many of the most challenging communities across the State. Many of the models we work within are focused on outputs, not outcomes. We need to shift to that focus on outcomes and trust. Investing in families and their capabilities has been touched upon here in many ways, as has supporting families progressing back towards education, training and employment, and increasing their capability to attain independence. There needs to be a greater connection between policy development and lived experience. I would ask for many who are involved in the policy development space to do some work on the front line and have some of that experience to inform their policy and practice.

I am grateful to the committee for the opportunity to talk today. My final thoughts would be that while funding is massively important, we need to focus our attention to ensure that our interventions are focused, targeted and strategic. I concur with what Mr. Rogers has said about what our organisations are really good at doing. We have managed to mainstream a number of evidence-based programmes and they have fallen within a number of organisations such as the HSE, CAMHS and Tusla. We are particularly good at identifying emerging need, finding programmes that work to meet that need and testing whether those programmes are suitable for use within an Irish context. We need to continue to do that but once we find something that does work, we need to be given enough time to ground those programmes in and to embed them so that they can be mainstreamed by statutory services. I do not think we are being given the opportunity to do that at this time.

The ABC programme is operating within 12 sites. It is a national child poverty programme. We know prevention and early intervention work. We know interventions like home visits and parent supports work along with the speech and language interventions we are delivering. Child poverty is a complex situation. If we do what works, it would be the most sensible outcome for everybody. In terms of what we are doing as an ABC programme, it is important to resource it adequately. That is the main message I want to leave. Prevention and early intervention does not just belong within one agency or Department; it belongs with them all.

I just have one sentence here. Corporatisation and privatisation erode community development and the voluntary sector in Ireland through reduced funding, a shift from grants to output-based procurement, increased administrative burdens and the stifling of advocacy.

Just to mention some of the positives, there is the expansion of the hot lunches programme, and the healthy Ireland measures on period poverty. We do not talk enough about period poverty and the impact it can have, especially on young girls, including staying in sports and the impact on their mental health. There is the free school books and stationery and the expansion of school bus low-cost options as well. When the committee is writing its report and recommendations after this period of work, it should be aspirational for children and young people and not forget about who is at the heart of it, and the families as well. The members are never going to meet children and young people who will be impacted by the recommendations that will be in the committee's report. We talk a lot about evidence-based practice which can take a length of time. Dr. McDonnell touched on it there as well. Sometimes practice-based evidence can be a bit more immediate, when we are seeing positive outcomes that we can get behind. As our policy-makers and our legislators, the committee members should offer hope for those in these situations. They should not underestimate the big impact smaller changes can make.

I will give the last word to Mr. Kelly.

The important thing to say is that a lot of pilots are being presented here today, and there is a lot of hard work and energy going into those pilots, gan dabht. We have to take the learning from them. Unfortunately, in marginalised communities up and down this country, and also in rural bóithríns, poverty is alive and well. If we are to seriously tackle it, it needs significant investment.

I thank all of our witnesses and committee members who stayed right until the last moment. We do not need to be big in numbers at the end. We will always keep the questions going. I want to reassure you that we do have a lot of people within the committee who have front-line experience. We have foster carers, youth workers, psychologists, people with children with disabilities and a wide range of passionate committee members who are definitely willing to ask the right questions, and a good secretariat that will deliver a good report. I thank our guests for their really informative engagement on this highly important topic, on this highly important day.