I welcome everybody here. Apologies have been received from Senator Ruane. I remind members and guests to turn off their mobile phones or switch them to flight mode.

The purpose of this meeting is to have an engagement on the topic of the functions of Tusla, the Child and Family Agency, as they relate to its relationship with the Courts Service and An Garda Síochána. On behalf of the committee, I welcome the following people from Tusla to the committee: Ms Kate Duggan, chief executive officer; Mr. Gerard Brophy, chief social worker; Ms Pamela Benson, head of legal services, and Ms Lorna Kavanagh, interim service director at services and integration.

The format of the meeting is that we will invite Tusla to make an opening statement and then members of the committee, in the order in which they have indicated to me, will put their questions With the committee's agreement, we will allow an initial seven minutes engagement for members and a shorter slot for non-members, and if time allows, we will allow for a second, shorter round. Is that agreed? Agreed. When all members have completed their initial engagements, we will allow for further interaction, if time allows.

Before I invite Tusla to deliver its opening statement, I have to explain some limitations to parliamentary privilege and the practices of the Houses as regards references a witness may make to other persons in their evidence. The evidence of witnesses physically present or who give evidence from within the parliamentary precincts is protected, pursuant to both the Constitution and statute, by absolute privilege. Witnesses are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in respect of an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

I invite Ms Duggan to deliver her opening statement.

I thank the Chair and committee for the invitation to appear before it today. I am joined by my colleagues: Mr. Gerard Brophy, chief social worker; Ms Pamela Benson, head of legal services; and Ms Lorna Kavanagh, our service director for separated children seeking international protection services. In January, we submitted a detailed submission to the committee on the functions of Tusla, the Child and Family Agency as they relate to its relationship with the Courts Service and An Garda Síochána. We are grateful for the opportunity to meet with the committee today to continue this important discussion.

Tusla’s mission is to support the safety and well-being of children, particularly those whose circumstances are complex or who need additional support. Every year, staff engage with tens of thousands of families and the majority of those interactions are positive in helping them to successfully grow up safely. As an agency, we responded to over 106,000 referrals in 2025 - that is a 100% increase since the agency was established in 2014 - and almost 6,000 children and young people were in the care of Tusla. Around 60% of our work is preventative - supporting school attendance, ensuring childcare facilities are safe and helping families through difficult times before a crisis hits. We support thousands of families every year so children can stay safely at home.

Almost nine in ten young people in the care of the State are living with foster carers and engaged in school and education, or living in residential care homes which are homes, like yours or mine, where one, two, three or four young people are being looked after by caring, committed and dedicated staff. At the end of quarter 3 2025, there were 2,985 young people receiving an aftercare service; 84% of those young people aged between 18 and 22 were in education and training. We continue to advocate with other relevant public services and organisations for the interests of care leavers.

There has been a 500% increase in referrals to our separated children seeking international protection service. In 2025, there were almost 800 referrals to the service, with 1,200 unaccompanied minors in care or accommodated by Tusla in 2025. In relation to child safety work, we are challenged by the increasingly complex needs of a small cohort of vulnerable young people. We are seeing a marked increase in the number of children presenting with highly complex needs, including mental health challenges, substance misuse, disabilities, exploitation and behaviours linked to criminality. Child safety does not operate in isolation. Keeping children safe depends on a network of people and services, including families, schools, health professionals, An Garda Síochána, community organisations and others. As the agency with primary responsibility for child welfare and protection, we work closely with An Garda Síochána to ensure children and families receive appropriate care and protection.

We collaborate at national, regional and network levels, including national oversight by myself with the assistant commissioner and the working protocol between An Garda Síochána and Tusla, which sets out the tasks undertaken by staff in Tusla and the roles and obligations of An Garda Síochána in safeguarding children. The Barnahus model and associated interdepartmental group brings child protection, policing, therapeutic and forensic mental health services together under one roof to provide integrated services for children who experience sexual abuse and their non-offending family members. The data sharing agreement, signed in 2025, enables Tusla and An Garda Síochána to now discharge our respective statutory functions. The child sexual exploitation procedure was developed in 2021 to assist Tusla social workers and care workers in recognising indicators of child sexual exploitation and making appropriate referrals to the Garda. Our joint protocol with An Garda Síochána for missing children in care is in place outlines the steps to be taken by both organisations when a young person is deemed missing.

Joint working between Tusla and the Garda forms an integral part of the child protection and welfare services. The joint working protocol and the national and local structures assist with inter-agency collaboration and the development of further efficiencies. A number of recommendations were made in our submission, which are being actioned, to further strengthen the operating relationship between Tusla and the Garda, such as child protection units in Garda divisions across the country. Our functions in relation to the Courts Service are vital for upholding child protection, children’s rights and child welfare under Irish law, and includes child protection interventions, alternative care and oversight, seeking court approvals for admissions to and extensions to care and educational welfare enforcement. Our engagement with the Courts Service is primarily through the District Court for routine child in care proceedings, and the High Court or Supreme Court for appeals, special care, wardships and inherent jurisdiction applications, as well as judicial reviews.

All of our interactions with the court system are grounded in a robust legislative framework designed to prioritise children's best interests, welfare, and protection. Our working relationship with the court system is professional, positive and beneficial. There are opportunities to further strengthen the existing relationship to benefit children or families, including enhancing dedicated child in care settings and court availability. I believe the work we do is some of the most important in the State and it is a privilege for us to work for this agency, with staff and partners in the community to deliver services for children and families across the country. I thank the Chair and the committee I am happy to answer any questions they have.

I thank Ms Duggan. We will now open for interactions with members.

I thank the Tusla officials for coming in. I apologise as I will probably have to leave after this. I will be speaking in the Chamber in a few minutes. I want to bring up a few bits and pieces I have a few concerns about. We all saw the chaos in care documentary on RTÉ's "Prime Time" and the special emergency arrangements, SEAs, as they were called on the programme. They are unregulated, unregistered private businesses who are making vast profits out of some of our most vulnerable children. I think the cost associated with them was up to €14,400 per week to place a child in one of these settings. When that is compared with a foster carer who receives €420 per week for one child, there should be no question there. More resources should be put into the foster system and making sure children get the care they need.

The link to this in relation to the courts is on the "Prime Time" documentary, the judge said it was wrong and shameful to place children into these unregulated settings. We saw images of children who were basically confined to hotel rooms and living on fast food. It is absolutely horrendous. I was talking to someone in my own area whose child, through no fault of their own, had to be placed in one of these settings. They were in homeless accommodation so the poor child was going from hotel to hotel without any break whatsoever. What has Tusla done since that documentary to move away from these unregulated settings? What more can be done on that?

I thank the Deputy. That "Prime Time" investigation was difficult watching. While we cannot talk to the specifics of any cases, it represents that in some cases, there is a small cohort of young people for whom we are seeking to work with wider agencies in terms of better meeting their needs, whether that is for substance misuse, working with the Garda in terms of the risk of criminal exploitation or in relation to mental health challenges.

When we refer to special emergency arrangements, I will give some context as to why they arose. They were always a feature of the care system but post Covid, they incrementally increased by almost 50% in the year just after Covid. We started to see a rise in young people who were being volunteered into care from a home environment because of the complexity of the situation. I will speak to some general examples. It might have been a young person who was being exploited by a criminal gang where a parent was struggling to keep that young person at home and there were threats to the house or family. They thought volunteering them into the care of the State might be a safer option.

In any one week, about 50% of the young people who are in an SEA come to us directly from home. The rest come from where there has already been a breakdown. They have been in a foster care placement or residential placement and there has been a breakdown in that placement. When that happens, as an agency we have to find what is described as an immediate place of safety. We remember the stories from years ago of children being left in Garda stations and hospitals. That is not what we wanted for any child. The engagement of private providers for emergency placements grew from that. Over the past two years, we have worked absolutely tirelessly to eliminate special emergency arrangements from our system.

I am delighted to be able to say this to the committee - and it is not coincidental in terms of the "Prime Time" episode; it follows two years of hard work - that as of last week, we no longer have special emergency arrangements as a feature of our service. If I look to last week, there were about 84 young people who needed an emergency place of safety. We have supported 21 of the providers to become registered providers. They are subject to the same inspection and monitoring of any private placement. There were 26 who could not do so and failed the registration process. We have taken those under the governance of Tusla and they are subject to HIQA inspection and monitoring.

At any one time we have about 25 where the provider is going through a period of registration and under law they are entitled to have 45 days to achieve registration. They are private providers. We absolutely want to reduce our reliance on private providers. On the cost the Deputy talks about, of just under €14,500 a week, it is important to put that in context. These are single-occupancy placements where one young person has to live with at least two staff members. In some cases, because of the nature of their presentation they may need three staff members with them, in terms of the safety of the staff and of the young person. They are supervised seven days a week for 24 hours a day, so the cost of a single occupancy is about €14,000 and when it is a dual occupancy it is about €10,000. When you compare that with one of our mainstream services, where we have a single-occupancy placement for a very complex child, that could be up to €19,000 under the registered services.

Okay. That seems welcome news, on the surface. Ms Duggan mentioned some of these providers are now regulated and within the Tusla system, which is to be welcomed. She mentioned some of them have not met the regulations and they are now under the care of HIQA. Does she want to explain that to me?

Yes. Prior to this these providers were providers and were stand-alone entities. Under this new change we were not satisfied with the levels of governance and oversight so we put our teams in over governing and overseeing the practice and the running of those units.

Are there still children in these facilities as we speak?

There are still children in them. We have invited members of the children's committee to visit and they are coming to visit some of those special emergency arrangements in July. When we talk about a special emergency arrangement, many of them are two-bedroom apartments or holiday chalets. One of the reasons we have struggled to be able to have more Tusla residential services is it is only really since 2023 we have got capital investment to open units and with the current property challenges that are faced across wider society we are challenged to be able to purchase properties and to get a property to the level that it would be registered, as all our services have to registered by HIQA. To get to that level, in terms of the requirements for registration, it is often the property is more like a domiciliary - it is an apartment that my daughter who is in college would be very happy to live in. The standard is a domiciliary-type environment. As for hotels, there would certainly be, in any one week, only maybe one young person in a hotel for the shortest period. We have sought to eliminate that completely from our service. It is about capital investment to get more statutory centres open in terms of Tusla centres or investment in the community and voluntary sector so it can open more centres.

I do not want to underestimate the challenge here, which a lot of the time is that these children need wider, cross-government changes in terms of addiction, links to criminality and exploitation. Children are being exploited from the age of nine, ten and 11 by criminal gangs across the cities and parents are struggling to cope with those children and young people.

I thank Ms Duggan and her team for being with us and I thank Tusla for the work it does in a very challenging area and across many spectrums. Ms Duggan mentioned there were 106,000 referrals in 2025, which is a 100% increase since the agency's establishment in 2014. I am thinking about how that breaks down year on year in, say, 2025, 2024 and 2023 and what the percentage increases are there. That is one question. On children who go missing from these homes, do we have data on the numbers there? On the aftercare of those particular young adults and how they have progressed, do we track them when they move out of that setting to see how they get on in their journey of life thereafter? On separated children seeking international protection, that last paragraph on page 2 is quite alarming. It refers to a 500% increase in referrals. What is that increase down to, in the officials' opinion? What is going on there? Also, have we any idea of the ages of those particular kids?

I might come in on the referrals and the missing children and then Ms Kavanagh will talk about the separated children.

With referrals it works out at an increase of about 10% or 11% year on year. We obviously have the data on children missing from care. It is important, first of all, to put this in context in that sometimes for many of these young people, because they are under court direction from a legal perspective, we are the legal parent, the legal guardian and we have obvious responsibilities to the court and to the system. As I said, if we were to bring members to visit one of these residential units they could be a lovely detached house in the middle of County Cavan, County Leitrim or County Longford where the children live with their staff. For some of these children who are deemed missing in care, they are children who broke what is their curfew. They are the children who were to be home at 9 p.m. and did not come home until 11 p.m. There is that cohort of young people who are counted in our figures because we are obliged to report them in term of HIQA and in terms of compliance if they were not back when they were supposed to be according to their care plan. They are deemed missing. They are the young people who are not as worried about. We talk to them like any parent would when a child comes home who has broken their curfew and not come back when they were supposed to. What is most important for us is that we understand or talk to them about whether there were any risks when they were not back. I mean any risks in respect of their behaviour or who they were with.

For some of these young people we find they look to go home. They look to go back to their home environment, their local community or their networks. There are a number of different types of events. If I give the example from 4 June, on that date 11 young people had not reported within the curfew time at the end of that day. We know eight of them stayed in contact with their social worker, so they let us know they were not coming back but they did not tell us where they were. Then there were three young people who were not in contact with their social worker. We have to record all 11 of those young people as missing and we have to notify the Garda because of our responsibilities to the children, the courts and HIQA. Within our separated children seeking international protection service there were 18. Ms Kavanagh might speak a bit to that if the Senator needs to ask more questions. These children have arrived and then gone, often indicating they planned to go but, again, because we do not have knowledge of where they are, they are still absent from our care. Obviously when we report a child is missing it is the responsibility of the Garda to locate that child, perhaps by pinging their phone or issuing an alert. Obviously our staff completely engage by giving as much information as they can.

On aftercare, I am looking at the figures in my email. If we take the particular period in the last quarter, once a child is in aftercare, if they are in education and training we support them up to the age 23, which is Government policy. A lot of people would advocate that be extended. Some 8% of them stayed on within their residential placement because, perhaps, they are doing their leaving certificate and we felt it was appropriate for them to be there. A total of 42% of them are staying with their carers. That is the most significant figure. These are young people who have grown up with their foster carers. Their foster carers might not have adopted them but they see the young people as theirs, as part of the family, and they remain living there. Some 23% are now out in independent living. We have supported them to live in independent living. Then 29% of them are living in our designated care leavers' accommodation. Some 9% of them - I can give the committee the data on this - are living at home. Another 2% are living in supported lodgings, which is almost like student digs. We know 8%, or 181 of them who had been in care, describe themselves as homeless. They described that they had left the care system and were not able to find accommodation. What has been very positive is the work we have done with the Department of housing to get care leavers prioritised for CAS. Working with local councils, we have steering groups in place in all of our Tusla areas and the county councils are now on those steering groups in terms of seeking to prioritise care leavers for housing. Does Ms Kavanagh want to give the numbers?

Yes. On separated children and the reason for the very significant increase, a lot of that commenced around 2022 with the war in Ukraine.

Since March 2022, we have accommodated in excess of 900 unaccompanied minors who came from Ukraine. Many of them have since aged out and we have about 200 remaining in our care. That was a big driver of the increase. Just after Covid, a lot of international travel opened up. All member states recognise that a global movement of people recommenced after Covid. That has been a driver of the numbers.

On the nationalities of the children, over the past two to three years, the three main countries where children are arriving from are Somalia, Afghanistan and Ukraine. They switch between first, second and third for arrivals, but they are generally from those three countries. There are about 20 other countries from which children arrive in single figures, including Iran, Iraq, Chad and many countries in Africa, but they come mainly from Somalia, Afghanistan and Ukraine. Obviously, there is war and civil unrest. After the Americans pulled out of Afghanistan, we saw an increase.

Most of the young people are 16 or 17. That makes sense with regard to their ability to get here and to travel on their own. We get some very young children sometimes. That can include a child being intercepted at the airport where staff at the airport felt the child was being trafficked into the country. We could have eight-, ten- or 12-year-old children who are in our care for a period of time while we try to reunify them, but it would be a single kid every now and again. The number is very low. The vast majority are 16 or 17 and are boys.

In practical terms, how does that 15- or 16-year-old manage to get from his or her country of origin to Dublin?

They would often have had assistance for part, if not all, of the journey. The nature of it is that the family would be supportive of the young people leaving the country because of the risk to them, if they would be targeted to fight, for example. There is often support behind the child coming and somebody who assists him or her with part of the journey. It is not so much trafficking as it is smuggling. It is with the consent of the individual and of the family. Often the young people arrive in Ireland and do not really realise that Ireland is not the United Kingdom. Ireland is an unknown to many of the children who arrive. They may not have heard of it.

As the Senator knows, we have had issues in the past, which we spoke about at a previous Oireachtas committee, with young people sometimes landing in Ireland and then travelling north to get into the UK. That has been a bit of a pattern, but the number of separate children who are going missing has been significantly reducing since our reliance on special emergency arrangements stopped. We only have one child who is in a special emergency arrangement at the moment, because we have been able to upscale the provision of residential services. The numbers are such that it has taken time to have sufficient capacity, but we are pretty much there now. They stabilise more quickly in residential care and have a much better sense of belonging and involvement with the team who look after them. If they indicate that they plan on leaving, they are really discouraged from doing that.

Ms Duggan mentioned that Tusla has a significant number of referrals annually. Is there a breakdown of the sources of those referrals? Is it just the Garda, or the Garda and education, or are there other sources?

The Garda would be our top referrer. I have a detailed breakdown, which I can give to the Deputy. In quarter one, for example, 34% of the referrals were from the Garda, 15% were from teachers, about 13% were from safeguarding officers in clubs or organisations, and the rest were from medical, social and health services, with about 2% of referrals from parents themselves. We have just implemented a really significant change programme in the agency. One benefit of that is that, up until December of last year, every referral had to come through a child protection service, so parents who might have wanted to reach out for support because they were struggling or needed some early supported intervention may have been fearful to do that, with regard to the child protection response, but now we have a direct referral where a referrer or a parent can make a referral directly for a family support system. That relates to our ambition to provide much earlier supports and intervention to children and young people when they seek a response from Tusla.

The witnesses mentioned children coming from abroad, looking for protection, and Tusla's role there. Does Tusla have any role in identifying the ages of those children? How does it go about that?

Up until quite recently, we did eligibility assessments. We did not have a mandate for doing age assessment but if a referral came to us, we did an eligibility assessment to try to establish that the young person was entitled to services under the Child Care Act, so we effectively assessed whether he or she was a child. In January, the Department of justice started undertaking some of those assessments, screening for age, which has had quite a significant impact on our referral numbers. There is another change since 12 June, which is that the International Protection Act 2026 has gone live, relating to the pact on migration, and the Department of justice will be conducting all age assessments going forward. We will not have a role in age assessment as of Thursday.

We never had a role.

Yes, we just did eligibility assessments.

When Ms Kavanagh says it has an impact on the referral numbers, I presume that is downwards.

Yes.

Grooming legislation, relating to cases where children are groomed into a life of crime, has been on the Statute Book for a couple of years. There have only been a very small number of prosecutions for that - between 12 and 17 since the legislation was brought in. Anecdotally, it can be seen on the streets. Particularly in Dublin, it can be seen anywhere. You can see these young kids rallied up, going around on e-scooters, e-bikes, scramblers and e-scramblers, and all of that paraphernalia. They are not always covered up, either. I came across an incident last week with an eight- or nine-year-old on a scooter. It was totally blatant. Their identify was totally disclosed and could have been recorded. It is really prevalent. My concern is that the State as a whole clearly is not doing enough to combat this particular issue. Is there anything further that Tusla can do to help in that regard? Do the witnesses see any other bodies having an additional role?

There is comprehensive work between us and the Garda. The Garda set up its national child protection team in the last number of years and has regional teams in the various divisions. They all have child protection teams. When the legislation was passed, grooming was seen more in the context of child sexual abuse or grooming children for abuse. The issue the Deputy referred to regarding crime is also associated with trafficking. There is much discussion, along with the Department of justice, about trafficking legislation and who reports that a child is being trafficked. The Garda would judge that at the moment. There are quite a number of close working relationships between the bodies. It is very difficult to get prosecutions.

It is a delicate balance. We do not want to take children away from their families. If there is a malign influence and children are being neglected, or if a school reports that a child is being neglected, obviously we will engage with that. In many of those situations, it probably does not cross that line. It is a much more complex situation where maybe the children are benefiting in some way from this and may be doing it with permission within their family, extended family or network, so it is much more complex. There has been a good deal of work done in Greentown and Redtown, with the University of Limerick, the Garda and the Department of justice in the last number of years. As trafficking legislation develops, we will be able to develop better ways to engage with that. As I said, much work is ongoing on that.

Does Mr. Brophy think legislation is the only thing to help? We already have legislation whereby it is a crime for an adult to involve a minor in criminal activity.

Are there any instruments that might be of use?

While we will be involved in the welfare side, 50% of our referrals are about welfare issues. Some of them might well involve crime but generally the ones we get are where children are involved in robbing a pizza or taking food, sometimes because of neglect. If there is neglect there we will generally get involved in all those and we will support that family. We work with the gardaí where it is engaging with crime. It is about establishing a way. The gardaí are probably better placed to speak about why there are not more prosecutions or why they are not better able to engage on that regarding welfare.

And education and training.

It is more about seeing if there is anything else that can be used in this, in particular, because seeing children involved in crime is horrendous and it is not the way to go.

I think it is the investment. This year we were delighted to be able to fund another ten family resource centres. The answers lie in local communities with people who understand the needs of the communities, who understand the risks and who know the people within the communities who may be a risk to children or adults from influencing, grooming or that kind of thing. It is about those local communities knowing what they need and what the particular response is. We are funding about 450 community and voluntary services at the moment ranging from offering sports activities to other options if there is any chance of working with these young children. When you look at some of these documentaries on TV, you learn that some of these kids are doing it for money or for designer clothes and are being influenced to behave in a certain way. There is a peer-on-peer challenge. People want to impress their peers. It is about early awareness and children recognising threats. If a child goes from one of our residential places and does not come back, it is about how our staff are engaging with them and about those young people recognising that if someone is giving them something, there will be something required of them in return. It is about education and awareness and local communities being supported to fund local responses. We can all see it in communities across the country. We are committed to working with other agencies, family resource centres and other community and voluntary organisations and getting better local responses.

I welcome the witnesses. I will start where I did not intend. On child criminal exploitation, the engagement of children in criminal activity legislation passed in 2023. The identifier of children being groomed is a role for Tusla.

Mr. Brophy might talk about that legislation. Is that the trafficking legislation?

The engagement of children in criminal activity legislation, which became known as Fagin's law, includes identifiers of children who have been groomed to a court. What is the statutory role for Tusla in that legislation?

I think it is in support of the gardaí. It will be the gardaí who take those prosecution cases. That is not a role Tusla has a competence to fulfil in lots of ways. What we can evidence is neglect and we can certainly evidence a malign influence. As I said earlier, we are most used to doing that in terms of child sexual abuse or physical abuse. Those are the cases where children are coming forward to talk about what has happened to them. They might not talk about it at the beginning. There is a process you have to go through around building relationships. The same might be true in these cases around grooming for crime.

Very much so. The reason I am raising it first is because in an answer to one of the earlier questions, Ms Duggan talked about children being placed into special care arrangements. She said it was some of the children who have been groomed into criminality. That came to the fore a couple of months ago when the special arrangement catastrophe was raised on "Prime Time" and in The Journal. I am also conscious that the Ombudsman for Children, Dr. Niall Muldoon, spoke about children who need special care arrangements who had become criminalised for damaging the settings they were in and then ended up in Oberstown following that. It seems structurally perverse that a child who we recognise as having been groomed into criminality - exploited by somebody to engage in behaviour that will impact on the rest of his life - would be placed into a care setting which we all accept is not suitable for that child’s needs. When they are acting out in a way that others would say is criminal and operating out of trauma, which we recognise was enforced, they end up in Oberstown. That seems grossly unfair.

When I was talking to the Deputy, I was explaining some of the reasons parents might have to decide to say they are no longer able to care safely or may be worried about the risk to other children or to themselves. I was just using one example. I talked to the Deputy about the fact that we have now eliminated special emergency arrangements, as they were.

There was also a suggestion that there might be one person still in a special-----

Separated.

Separated - but that is still in a special emergency arrangement.

It is operating under an emergency placement.

On language, there is no child in a special emergency arrangement.

On that, is every child in a regulatory environment that can be inspected by HIQA?

To explain the current set up, any private provider is not inspected by HIQA. They are inspected by the regulatory arm of Tusla, which is our alternative care inspection monitoring service, ACIMS, team. That is whether that is an emergency placement or a mainstream residential private one. We would certainly welcome that. We have looked for HIQA to take over the inspection and monitoring of all placements. Any child who is in an emergency placement tonight is either subject to the ACIMS service or to the HIQA service, or they are in a placement where they are looking to go through registration and they would not be subject to inspection. They have 45 days to do that under the law.

Okay. I will have another question on that shortly-----

Can I go back to children acting out and being criminalised? I do not have the data in front of me but the numbers are very low. We see the levels of violence, harassment and aggression against our staff. The numbers are significant. We recognise that these are young people who are traumatised and acting out as a result of that trauma. Sometimes it may be as a result of substance misuse. We absolutely recognise that. While there is a significant level of incidents, and we obviously have a duty to protect the health and welfare of our staff at work under the legislation, there are very few referrals that we make to An Garda Síochána. Our staff do not want to make statements against or refer children in care to An Garda Síochána. We may have had one or two examples of various incidents where young people have set fires and burned down residential units - that would obviously have to be referred to An Garda Síochána – but we are certainly not an agency that tries to further contribute to the trauma of young people unless it is absolutely warranted.

There has been a very significant increase in close protection personnel, that is security staff, in Tusla settings. The figures have increased from 265,000 in 2023 to 426,000 in 2025. Does that reflect that at the same time there have been staff out on sick leave? What explains the increases there?

It is important to say close protective personnel do not replace a staff member out on sick leave. It is a very different service. We did see a very significant increase in the level of violence, harassment and aggression. We have had young people coming with metal bars and swinging them at staff, hitting staff and injuring them. We have had staff stabbed. Pregnant staff members have been kicked to the ground. We have had some very serious incidents. We have a duty to equally protect our staff so they can go about every day and be safe.

Without a shadow of a doubt.

Close protective personnel are trained security staff who are there to protect the staff, not to restrain the child. We have worked with HIQA to develop a policy on the use of close protective personnel. They can only be used in exceptional circumstances. The policy we have worked on has been agreed with HIQA and, on inspection and monitoring, it would look at our compliance with that policy.

I might come back to that in the second round.

The January submission said that some children in courts are providing language interpretation for their own parents. Is that still the case? Why is that happening? When can it be eradicated? Clearly that impacts the in camera rule, for example.

I will ask Ms Benson to speak on the interpretative services.

We see that at times. The Courts Service will usually provide interpretation services and we also have service providers who we use when it is needed so that they are official interpreters in relation to it. I have not seen that happen much lately but the Deputy is right that it would impact the in camera rule. It is something we have had some dealings and communications with the Courts Service on.

I understand that there are tender services for interpretation services to take place so that they will be official, vetted and available for parents in childcare proceedings.

Do we have statistics on how many times it has happened in the last 12 months?

Not to hand, no.

Is it possible to get those for the committee?

Would we record that or the Courts Service? We will take that away. If it is something we can get, we will come back to the Deputy.

I recognise the level of work the witnesses do and the stress in which they operate. I have personally seen it in the courts. I am by and large fully supportive of the recommendations they are making in regards to the Courts Service. I will pick up on where Deputy Gannon finished. The duty of care toward Tusla's own staff was mentioned. How many staff members are out on leave at the moment due to illness, particularly stress-related? I also raise the services Tusla provides to its own staff in dealing with that stress and any mental health issues they have. When they do return to work, what follow-on services are offered to them? I have had a number of representations brought to me by staff members, where they feel they have not been supported while at work and post leave. As a result, it is even more difficult for them to come back to work and pick up where they left off.

My second question is in regard to engagement with the community in a residential setting, particularly in housing estates. What engagement does Tusla take on with the general community before opening up a residential unit? Does Tusla continue that engagement throughout the process? I understand wholeheartedly that we are dealing with children who have suffered from trauma, addiction in some cases and that they might have violent tendencies. That can be quite difficult for a neighbourhood to understand. It is vital for neighbours and the community at large to understand what is happening. I have also had some incidents and representations where we have a situation where young people in a residential setting are acting out, quite frankly. This is causing huge disruption and upset because there is one particular estate which is by and large an older persons' estate, with young people acting out and causing damage, and they do not know what to do. I would like to know how Tusla will address those issues as well.

I am taking figures from the end of quarter 1. Our absenteeism rate could be around 4% in our non-front-line services as a public sector body. If we take our residential services, that is up at about 10.5%. That can mean on any particular month about 10.5% of staff are out on absence from work. What I do not have for the Deputy but can certainly get for her is the number who are on injury-related leave or on the different schemes. Some of those may be a genuine sickness related to cancer or surgery, something that-----

I am more concerned about-----

The Deputy asked about violence-related leave, absence, injury at work and stress.

----- violence, particularly stress, and how that is dealt with while they are at work, but particularly when they return to work.

In terms of staff, they do not have to tell us why they are out. Often, a certificate might say "Unfit for work" or "Unwell for work". In terms of having that level of breakdown, we may not be able to get that in terms of the number that are out because of stress and we might not know that is what it is. I say that in terms of the data quality or data integrity. Obviously, we have an employee assistance programme. We have a scheme in terms of back to work interviews and supports. There is a scheme for critical incident stress management, CISM. There are a lot of schemes there. What I do know, and I have also heard what the Deputy heard, is that there are experiences that individual staff members had that they might not have had the level of support they wanted from their particular line manager or in a particular centre.

Under our people strategy - I can share with the Deputy a list of the different programmes that are available if that is helpful - the challenge for us, like any organisation, is to make sure that all of our managers are implementing those programmes and know about the programmes that are available. We have invested a lot of money in our own staff hub in terms of making sure that staff can signpost themselves to know the services that are available. I can get the Deputy that information and share some of the examples. Our challenge is to make sure. We do an annual staff survey. One of the highest ratings we get in the staff surveys is staff who talk about their local line manager, the support they get from their local line manager and the support they get from colleagues. I cannot say that is every staff member's experience in every service. That is our challenge as an organisation and as an agency.

In terms of the engagement with-----

Before we go on, can I ask whether those programmes are voluntary or obligatory?

They are voluntary.

Considering the workload, the caseload and the stress, is there nothing in place to ensure that staff members, particularly those on the front line, have to go through a programme-----

That would be our supervision practice. We have a supervision policy. That would be-----

Is that sufficient? Will that delve in-----

Maybe Mr. Brophy will talk to supervision-reflective practice as a chief social worker.

It is about talking about the individual cases that a person is dealing with and how the person is dealing with that. What we have seen from working with families is that because it is so stressful, it is really important that the individual reflects on how it is impacting on them, so that they do not carry that stress with them and it impacts on other families in other situations. It has been core to social work since social work started. Everyone will have a supervision session every four to six weeks with their line manager. We have a trained system in engaging with that. It looks at the cases involved. It looks at the support they might need in taking on the work and whether they are getting the appropriate support up and down the organisation. It looks at what training they might need and whether they have identified training either to develop their own career or do other things. It also includes any other issues that might arise for the social worker.

They happen routinely without fail.

Yes, and we do audits to make sure that they happen as well. Can we say that this happens and that everyone experiences that? Can we say that the quality of supervision is the same? We cannot. We know that from our own audits. That is why we continue to review it. We have just renewed and reviewed our own supervision policy to try to widen that and include more disciplines in it as well.

In terms of the engagement with community, it is important to contextualise that up until 2023, there were a number of years where we did not open new residential units. Since 2023, it probably has been at a pace it would not have been at previously. I do not think we have always got it right in terms of engagement with local communities. I have certainly heard from members of local communities or community groups who said that they were not supported early enough and that they did not understand these young people and the complexity. It is that balance between everybody wanting a child to have a place but not wanting it to impact their community. I think that is just a lack of understanding. A lot of that can be dealt with through early engagement and early support with community groups and with individual members within the estate. It is something we are trying to work at.

I know the separated children seeking international protection service has experienced challenges because people might not have understood that these were children under 18 who were living within these homes within communities. On the one hand, we have a duty not to disclose that these young people are children and on the other, we have a duty to protect them within the community they are living in. It is challenging but we want to be better at it.

In terms of private providers that open, we do not have any control over their levels of engagement. It is certainly something we are mindful of now as we open, particularly units where they are in more built-up areas.

I thank all the witnesses for being here today. I agree with the opening statement that the work Tusla does is some of the most important in the State. I thank the witnesses for that. Will they help me understand as part of their work what happens or what structures are in place to support children who are ageing out of Tusla's care, particularly those in long-term foster care?

Mention was made earlier in the conversation about engagement with local authorities. I am particularly interested in housing. For a young person who might want to get out to be a fully functioning member of society, there is a challenge for children who are in their family of origin trying to get out and stand on their own two feet and there seems to be an additional challenge for children who are in long-term foster care. Is there a challenge with trying to ensure that a young person or a child can put their name as early as possible onto the social housing list? How does that work? Is it even across the country with all local authorities?

There is a structure in place for children who are leaving care and we have an aftercare service, a leaving care team. When a child is between the ages of 16 and 17 they will have an aftercare worker appointed. They will have the aftercare worker and they will have their allocated social worker or a social worker working with them for that last year. The aftercare worker's responsibility is to make that plan for when they move into aftercare. Obviously,. housing is a big consideration in that. Our CEO went through the figures earlier, but when they leave care about 42% of children stay with their existing carers. They stay in foster care and they are committed to them. They may move on from that after a number of years. By and large, that is the biggest cohort. Another 23% move into independent living. We know the capital assistance scheme, CAS, is really important for that. We have worked really hard with the local authorities over the last number of years. At one stage when I was in the mid-west we started out with 16 each year and we ended up building up to about 63 apartments for those young people leaving care. That is a fantastic opportunity for them to get into an apartment. They could stay there. They would have support when they are there as well so we would not just be leaving them there. They would have an aftercare worker plus they would maybe have someone working with them from Focus Ireland or the Peter McVerry Trust.

In Mr. Brophy's experience, is that available nationwide?

Yes, it is available nationwide. Is it available enough? Definitely not. Is it available everywhere we want it? Definitely not. However, it was a really significant move for children in aftercare. The more we could extend that, the better. That is a real boon for those children. It is a promise the State could make to them, having taken them into care, in terms of just giving them a home when they move out.

Even though they are there and they will have a home, we also engage them in training. They are entitled to continue to receive an aftercare allowance. Traditionally, that would have gone to the foster carers. We have gone through a process over a number of years where that is shared between foster carers and the young person but, by and large, it is with the young person after they leave care, to support them in their care. Obviously a lot of them stay in foster care, so that has to be negotiated as well. We try to make unique arrangements for each child that best supports them. This is always with a view to empowering them in terms of where they want to see themselves in society and where they want to see themselves going, so that training is really important.

I know the Deputy did not ask about this but I just want to mention the extensive ongoing research through the Department of children on young people in aftercare. It is probably the most significant thing we have done for the care system in the last 20 or 30 years. We are allowing ourselves to look and see what are actually the outcomes of those children coming through and what are the young people themselves and the adults saying who have come through that saying about it. There is a panel of children who have come through care and are in aftercare to lead that research. Over the next five to ten years, we will see really significant information coming out about how we can improve those services and the experience of people coming through it.

If anyone talks to any of our young people in aftercare or meet them through our aftercare group, through EPIC, the organisation which funds people in care or with care experience, the two things they call out as the most challenging for them are accommodation and mental health supports. We can think of our own families or young people we know who still at 28 or 30 need to be able to ring home and ask for something or want to be able to ring somebody and tell them when they are expecting a baby or they have got engaged. Very many of these young people do not have somebody to ring. Those are the difficulties and challenges, so it is around supporting them to build those networks of support, either with other young people in aftercare or through local communities. Certainly with regard to the support we need politically, our own Department is developing an alternative care policy. What we have contributed to that is to ask what we need from all the different Departments to support children who are in the care of the State. That is a question for the Department of housing, for the Department of Health in terms of prioritising access to health services and for the Department of sport in terms of funding sporting facilities and, as I said, in terms of mental health supports. There are 6,000 children in care who do not have a parent or a family and who we as a State are responsible for. I believe they should be prioritised across every Government Department in terms of access to services. When that policy and the action plan around the policy comes out, our ask to all the Government Departments is to look at how this could be done. It is not 50,000 or 60,000. It is 6,000 children in care.

Ms Duggan said that 42% stay with their foster carers, but I am particularly interested in the children who do not, for whatever reason. They cannot be allowed to fall off a cliff edge. If I have understood correctly, the ask is for more investment to make sure that there is more.

Some of it is not money, some of it is prioritisation. It is saying that we recognise that children in the care of the State are a unique cohort of young people whom we need to prioritise. For example, the Department of housing did say that it would prioritise them for CAS. Some of it is investment and money but some of it is around the whole of the State recognising these as a vulnerable group who need to be prioritised for access to services.

Housing and mental health are the priorities. I thank the witnesses.

I thank Ms Duggan for her opening remarks. She covered quite a broad brief of everything. When I look at the different protocols in place since 2020, I cannot help but focus and say that today is the justice committee. Is there any protocol that needs to be put in place? There seems to be a good working relationship with An Garda Síochána across a number of elements of it. Is there anything that needs to be put in place with the Courts Service that would make the life of the children at the centre of things, and those of their supports workers, a bit easier?

Mr. Brophy or Ms Benson might talk about the Childcare Act 1991 from a legal perspective.

We have various court user groups that we partake in, which work directly with the Courts Service in relation to improving facilities. We have a good relationship with the President of the District Court in relation to childcare proceedings. Mr. Brophy and I are part of a group in the Central Criminal Court on criminal matters relating to juveniles. Out of that came the juvenile protocol, which has committed, with a number of other State entities, to deal with cases involving children within a 52-week period. That is really significant, because before that it could be years before children would have their cases dealt with before the courts. There are a number of mechanisms. We are also on the family courts implementation steering group. I am the representative on that and it works on reform in the area of family law courts where Tusla will be part of it in relation to the childcare, although it is farther down in the phases.

There are ways in which we interact and have a liaison between the court. We also appointed the court liaison manager in relation to District Court and now High Court matters where it looks at practices and consistency across our reports. If certain issues keep coming up repeatedly, that is another mechanism. There are a number of ways but obviously, we have to be respectful of the separation of powers between the court and Tusla, but there are many ways in which we can interact.

Does Mr. Brophy want to say something on that?

It is worth mentioning the Barnahus initiative-----

I was about to say that.

Respecting the independence of the court, we work very much in tandem, as Ms Benson mentioned, with the Central Criminal Court protocol. What we have seen there is that the prosecution time of those cases where children are involved in the most serious of crimes, including rape and others, has reduced, in terms of getting the file to the Central Criminal Court, from 21 months to four months. That is a result of bringing all those agencies together.

I am delighted that Mr. Brophy has gone straight to the kernel of some of my questions. I thank the Chair for facilitating having the witnesses here today. This spans back to a child protection issue. We are not discussing the case or anything like that. Let us consider the case of a child with additional needs who is non-verbal and that parent and child were not sign-posted to the Barnahus and yet at the same time has gone through the whole court proceedings, where there was a barring order against the mum but there was nothing there to protect the child. I know that we have a fantastic, award-winning showcase Barnahus in Galway. How many more of them do we have around the country?

We have opened a virtual house in Cork but we have plans to build a physical house.

We are progressing that. The HSE and ourselves are working very well together on that. It will be up in Gurranebraher. Tomorrow, I am interviewing to find a manager for a centre in the east. Again, that will be a virtual Barnahus. We are really lucky on the Dublin side in that we have two existing services in CHI, which has now been amalgamated into one, the Alders unit, which has a really modern base in Tallaght hospital and another one in Blanchardstown.

How was that communicated? There seems to have been a gap. I am not saying the gap was on the part of Tusla. I am absolutely not saying that but there was misinformation in the signposting here. This mum was never even aware that a child with additional needs did not need to go through the trauma they went through, and it was trauma. I have visited Barnahus. I am a huge advocate for what it does and for its expansion. Why was this missed? Is there a view that only people who do not have additional needs go there?

There is a big need to communicate about this. It would be much easier to communicate if we had a Barnahus set up in the east as well. That would give a national message. We would be able to say clearly to all parents that, if they have concerns about child sexual abuse or if their child has been abused, this service is here for them. We are actively working on materials that would work for children who have significant disabilities and that would give their parents an introduction. We are extending that all of the time. It does take time to get there, however. We are trying to provide a service for the general population so there are a lot of different sections to take into consideration. These include children with sight problems, children with speech problems and children who cannot communicate at all. There was mention of interpretation services earlier. We want a really high standard of interpretation so that we get the real words people are saying. That can be difficult for interpreters, who need to be trained in trauma and so on.

Internally, it is also about improving referral pathways from services and telling services we now have that hub-and-spoke model in the west of Ireland. We need to make sure that referrals from Donegal, Sligo and Limerick get into Barnahus in the south and west and to CHI in the east. We are trying to get to a point at which all of those referrals will have the opportunity to come through Barnahus.

On the virtual services, I assume there is funding within the budget to have people at different sites and locations that people will be able to access.

The budget has not been an issue. We have had great support. We have had great success with the Dormant Accounts Fund and with the Department.

I suppose we need to expand the scope of the conversation. Where language is a barrier and where we have undocumented or separated children who need to access such services, how do we support those children, who do not have anybody? How are we supporting children within foster care or in the care system? Where an issue or incident arises, how do they get access to these services?

It is a new concept. It is real interagency working. It is not all in our own silos. It is about the four agencies coming together and making a plan. Just sitting down and doing that requires a good bit of additional resource. It means you have to be in the one room together, whether virtual or otherwise. That takes time to build. The Senator mentioned the protocols earlier. We are building those protocols to make that happen.

I have one last question. It relates to the protocol. Tusla is sitting in one room with Tusla and the Department of children and disabilities. There is a memorandum of understanding between Tusla and the HSE, particularly its disabilities function. Initially, very small money was provided but the cases are very complex. Is there sufficient budget to support Tusla in its role in ensuring that children who are coming into the care system, whether documented or not, have access to the correct HSE supports? Is there enough in the budget to allow that to happen?

In common with many young people, we are struggling to get access to HSE services because of the waiting lists. We can take children into care and find them a placement but getting access to mental health and disability services is challenging.

I will continue on from where Senator Rabbitte left off. She pointed at me and told me to make sure I follow that up. With regard to foster care, residential care, specialist placements and so on, the witnesses spoke earlier about mental health supports and how they are not adequate to cater for demand. Are there enough residential and foster care spaces to cope with the demand?

In short, no. We are absolutely delighted with the number of children in care who are in foster care. We are really a world leader in that regard. It is a result of that spirit of the meitheal in communities right across Ireland. Foster carers have come forward. There are over 3,000 foster carers caring for children right across the country. We have seen that number reduce over the last two or three years. We have made a huge effort, particularly over the past three years, to recruit more foster carers. We have been doing lots of work around that. In 2025, for the first time, we saw more foster carers recruited. However, it does mean that there are some young people under the age of 12 in residential care today. If we had more foster carers, they would be in foster care. From a residential perspective, we have talked about young people being in temporary emergency placements when we would like them to be able to be in mainstream residential placements where they would have that permanency of home. We are probably short about 240 or 250 placements at the moment.

My next question was going to be whether Ms Duggan could quantify or put a number on it. I will move onto the issue of children with complex needs. This was touched on briefly in the last slot. If somebody presents with complex needs, a serious mental issue or whatever the case may be, what happens to those children if supports are not readily available to them? How does the system cope with them?

If children who are living at home with their own families present with such needs, we try to direct them towards local services and support them to know where local services are. We signpost them to counselling services within our family resource centres or other community and voluntary services. Families may present to us because their children have very significant mental health issues. I use the term "mental health". As Senator Rabbitte will be familiar with, it is sometimes it is about psychological supports. There is a significant difference. The term "mental health" is sometimes used to cover too broad a spectrum. Often, what these young people need is psychological support, particularly where they have experienced trauma. For us, it is about working with the HSE at the local, regional and national levels to promote access to services. We have seen cases where children have met the criteria for CAMHS supports but, as is well recognised, the waiting lists for some of those services that are in place-----

On the 240 children in residential care who Ms Duggan said do not have a foster family to go to, what happens to those children if they are in need or require these interventions?

If a young person needs to be in care, they are in care. They are in a placement. As I have said, some may be in one of those temporary emergency placements rather than a permanent place they know they will be living for the next ten years. Under the Act, we are not responsible for the provision of mental health services. What would any parent do if their child was presenting with suicidal ideation, overdoses or self-harming? They would seek access to health services.

I am assuming there is a priority-----

As the corporate parent-----

-----or a recognition of the fact that they do not have the supports the rest of us in this room have.

No, there is no prioritisation.

There is no priority or recognition given to them.

No.

I do not have much time left. I will move onto the child protection units in the various Garda divisions. When the Garda divisions were consolidated or reformed - whatever way you want to put it - the number decreased from 27 to 21. Were those child protection units maintained? Is there still nationwide coverage?

An Garda Síochána would be better placed to speak on the numbers but we certainly have contact with these units on an ongoing basis. They are our main point of contact in every Tusla area across the regions. There is daily contact. The units will notify us of issues and we will notify them of other issues. There are strategy meetings and representatives of both bodies attend child protection conferences. There are children in our child protection notification system. We work together on cases that involve the courts or where children are missing. We have ongoing contact on a multitude of issues.

Barnahus was mentioned a while ago. I am obviously from Cork. My area is the northside of the city. Will the witnesses speak to the virtual clinic and the timeline for when the Barnahus is hoped to be physically on site in Gurranebraher? Where will that be? Tell us something.

I would be loath to say when we will be physically on site, but we have a very detailed plan. The HSE has a new template coming in for how to get buildings through. We are the first getting through under that template. We have put in all our paperwork. The money is there and has been allocated to the project. There is no shortage in that regard. We are probably in line with all the other hospital building projects that need to come along the HSE line. Currently, we are in St. Finbarr's Hospital. We have had a place there long before Tusla was set up. The agency was set up by the HSE when we were there. There is a medical unit. There has been extensive investment with paediatricians in the Cork centre, which has allowed us to get to 12 over seven.

Will Mr. Brophy give me an idea of the demands on that service? How many clients are seen virtually?

The service was set up approximately 18 months ago. In the region of 200 clients have come through it. It is for Cork, Kerry, south Tipperary and Waterford. Waterford also has a SATU. There is also a SATU in Cork. We work closely with those services because children aged 14 to 18 will attend the SATUs.

Mr. Brophy is referring to sexual assault treatment units.

We work closely with those services. There are a lot of referrals coming in for older children. There are sometimes peer-on-peer reviews. That is certainly very busy. The service has been well received and well supported locally. We are delighted to be able to support those families and children.

I will ask some questions. I again thank the Tusla representatives for being here. I want a bit of clarity. The figure we had for January 2020 to September 2025 was that in or around 7,000 children went missing from Tusla care. Ms Duggan is saying that many of those relate to 16- or 17-year-olds who were due back at 7 p.m. but who did not get back until 9 p.m. or 11 p.m. How many do not relate to such cases? Can Tusla provide actual information about missing children, as we would define it, which would mean children who went missing and were unaccounted for for a lengthy period?

That is one of the challenges we face. Because these children are under care orders from the courts and because HIQA inspects and monitors all of our services, the definition is that a child is missing when he or she is not where he or she is supposed to be.

That is fine.

We do not collect information on the basis that, on the one hand, we want to just collect information on children who have missed their curfews. If a child is missing, under his or her care plan, that must be notified to An Garda Síochána.

Tusla does not have information in terms of-----

We collect the numbers all of the time.

Would Ms Duggan have the numbers, for example, for children under the age of 14?

I do not have the figures here, but I can get them for the Cathaoirleach. We break the information down by the number of children missing and the number who are in contact, even if we do not know where we are. They may, for example, say to the social worker that they are not coming back but will not say where they are. We also have information on how long they are missing. All of that information is readily available every month.

A child must be what age and must have been missing for how long for it to be considered an emergency?

Every missing child is notified to the Garda. That is our obligation under the children's care plan, the regulatory framework within which we work and of the court system within which we work. Any child who is missing must, in line with the absence plan, be reported missing and that must be notified to the Garda. If something happened to a child in care when he or she was not in his or her home on a particular night, questions would be asked of us.

There was a famous case last year, as the witnesses will know, in Citywest. A young child was attacked. I am not going to say anything that would in any way identify anybody involved, but one of the things that struck me, having had young children myself, was how the hell a ten-year-old went missing without the public being made aware of it. I know that if my ten-year-old daughter was unaccounted for, the world would find out. I would have expectations. Yet, the first anybody heard that the child was missing at all was after the attack had become public. How did that happen?

Again, I obviously cannot discuss the specific case, but we have young people, as I said, who go missing from their homes. Young people who are out on activities, perhaps going swimming or to the cinema with staff, go missing. They say they are going to the toilet and go missing. That is a basic example. As soon as they go missing, we notify the Garda. It is the Garda's determination under the joint protocol as to whether or not a media alert is issued. It is the Garda that makes a decision, based on all of the information known to it, as to whether or not to use its own resources and work with the teams, families and networks of support, or issue a media alert.

Tusla subsequently issued a statement on the case. I understand it has apologised. What exactly did Tusla apologise for?

I am going to be very honest. When we issued our media statement, we knew that members of the public might have found it difficult to comprehend that a ten-year-old went missing. I was trying to contextualise that this ten-year-old had very complex needs and behaviours. I apologised for the offence that caused people who felt I was blaming the ten-year-old. I would not want anyone to think that is the type of person I am or that those are the values I hold. I was trying to provide a context to what some people perceive as the behaviours of one ten-year-old in comparison with those of other ten-year-olds because of the trauma they have experienced in their lives and the supports they have lacked. I apologised for that description because people did take offence to it. I had to own that.

As an elected representative, I always caveat everything I say about Tusla on the basis that a lot of the work the agency does happens far from the public eye. Naturally, the largest number of public interactions that elected representatives receive on any given topic will be where people are bringing forward their negative experiences. That is a caveat, and it is understandable. However, I have made the point that nobody who has ever contacted me or with whom I have ever engaged with in the context of their engagement with Tusla has brought forward a positive experience. That comes from parents, children who come through the system, foster parents and legal representatives. There is a sense that Tusla is dysfunctional. When I saw that statement being issued, I thought Tusla was advertising the fact. To talk about a child's behavioural issues when that child had just been subject to an attack seemed to me representative of an organisation that was building its own defence instead of putting the welfare of the child to the forefront. Has there been any cultural or systematic re-evaluation of how Tusla approaches child welfare issues resulting from that experience?

The first thing to say is that sometimes the work we do that is positive is not seen or heard about. That is very important, not for me but for our staff. We have thousands of staff turning up every day, right across the country, working long hours to try to support families and children in the most difficult of circumstances. We have thousands of foster carers doing a great job. I met hundreds of foster carers over the past couple of months. I heard really good experiences and experiences that were not as good, where foster carers did not feel they were getting the supports they needed in terms of the children in their care and access to services. We do that all of the time in order that we can do better by those people who rely on us for a service.

Three years ago, we set out on a very ambitious change programme within Tusla, which I have led since I came in as chief executive, with the support of all of my colleagues. Over those three years, we have completely dismantled the structure of the organisation. We have rebuilt the structure. We have brought in a single point of entry for all children. We have brought in 90 brand-new family support teams across the country. We have brought in one digital system whereby people from all over Europe come over to see our digital child protection system. We now have one view of the child under one record. We are the only European state agency to have that for child protection. We have employed the most social workers ever. We have employed the most social care workers. We have developed apprenticeship programmes that were never there in terms of the supply of staff we need to be able to do our job. What I say every day is that we have the staff who know what to do. We have the staff to know how to care for children and young people. We need all other State services to work with us and we need the resources we need to deliver the care.

However, the reform is about continuing to improve. We recognise that we do not get everything right all of the time. We must own up and take responsibility when something goes wrong and make sure that we are-----

I am going to have to let other members in. I thank Ms Duggan for that response. Senator Keogan is not a member of the committee, but she is very welcome. I will give her five minutes for an interaction before I open the floor for a second round.

I appreciate that and thank the Cathaoirleach.

Ms Duggan and her team are very welcome. Throughout the years I have had a very positive experience of fostering. It was very enjoyable and a lot of those children are still in touch with me today.

I want to talk about something that is rarely spoken about. A young mother named Grace died last week by suicide after spending more than a year trying to be reunited with her infant son, who had been removed and placed into care shortly after his birth. Her death raises a broader question about an issue that receives very little public attention. International research has found that mothers whose children are taken into care face significantly elevated risks of self-harm and suicide. A Canadian study published in The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry found they were almost three times more likely to attempt suicide and more than four times more likely to die by suicide. Similar concerns were also documented by Professor Karen Broadhurst and her colleagues in the UK and Wales.

I will ask a couple of things. I think Ms Duggan might be able to commit to this. Does Tusla collect data on the deaths, including deaths by suicide, of parents whose children are in care or subject to care proceedings? If not, how can Tusla assess the impact of child removal on parent well-being and mortality? Has Tusla ever commissioned, funded or requested independent research into suicide, self-harm or serious mental health outcomes among parents whose children have been removed to State care? In light of Grace's death - I know her mum who is in hospice care is watching this interaction - and the international evidence, will Tusla commit here and now to carrying out an independent, national study into the mental health and mortality outcomes of parents whose children are separated from them and are in the care system? I know we are all talking about the life of the child-----

Make sure you do not raise any individual or personal cases.

Yes. I know we are talking about the life of the child here today but every child has a parent - a mother and a father. Let us never forget them. As a foster parent, to me they were the most important individuals in that child's life. It does not matter what that parent did to that child and how that parent brought up that child, there is unconditional love between that child and that parent that I as a foster parent would never take away. I know a number of children are taken away at birth. Will Tusla commit to having an independent national study into the mental health and mortality outcomes of parents who are separated from their children through the care system? Is that something Ms Duggan will commit to today?

First, if there is anybody watching, I do absolutely pass on my condolences for the passing of that person. It is very tragic when any person dies but particularly in the circumstances the Senator outlined. That is the first thing to say that is very important. One of the focuses Tusla has tried to have for the past number of years is to increase our supports to birth parents in terms of the work we do with birth parents and the support we give to them from a care perspective, a legal perspective and all of that. That is something Tusla is committed to doing.

When we are talking about something like the independent mental health outcomes of children taken into care, what I will commit to doing is to take that away because that is something that would have to be looked at in the context of our parent Department. It would have to be looked at in the context of the HSE and suicide prevention because it certainly would have the expertise in that area. When we are referencing mental health outcomes it would not be an expertise Tusla would have. I certainly can commit to bringing that representation back to our parent Department and to looking with the HSE at the fact that identified need was there.

My colleague just talked about the long-term study on outcomes for children in care that is under way. Many of those young people go on to be parents themselves. Unfortunately, for many of them, their children end up back in the care system. There may be something we can look at within that already commissioned research. I will certainly take this request away to look at it.

I thank Ms Duggan. Does Tusla have any figures on reunification in relation to children who are in care who are reunified with their parents? Does Tusla have any of those figures? There is nothing in Tusla's document on that.

What we capture is in terms of young people who were discharged from care or returned home. We know, for example, that last year about half of the young people who left the care system turned 18, which meant the other half left the care system because they were either adopted or reunified with their families.

What about children before the age of 18 and the support system? I know as a foster parent that I had a social worker. I am sure the parent who had the child taken off them would also have a social worker. With the support Tusla gives that parent, before the age of 18, do many of the children ever go back to that parent after the support that is given them?

Mr. Brophy might talk to the numbers in a second.

A brief response, if you can.

Reunification is really central in everything that we do. We will often have children in care on voluntary care. If the parent disputes that we might end up in court. Every time, before we go to court, the first question a judge asks is whether this child can be at home and for Tusla to show the efforts it has made to reunite this child with this mother. Tusla has family support and welfare supports. We have worked with community organisations to try to support families. Sometimes a parent will not want to work directly with Tusla, so we try to reach out and have as many partnerships as we can in order to do that and to get under whatever the problems are. Sometimes that is not possible. We have figures for reunification. It is difficult to look at the breakdown of exactly why children are reunified but we have significant numbers of children who are. There was a piece of international research done during the past number of years, and among the English-speaking countries of the world Ireland is among the highest to have children reunified and back at home.

Is this before the age of 18?

Yes, before the age of 18. Absolutely.

Fantastic.

It is central to what we want to do. We want to have every child at home, if we can. It is only if they cannot be at home-----

I thank the Senator.

Can I speak to the wider piece as well? For many parents we engage with, it is about their struggles with addiction and with mental health. I talk about the fact when we want to prioritise children in care, how we prioritise the birth parents of children in getting the supports they need to be able to care for their young people. Something Tusla would welcome is advocacy around that.

Did Ms Duggan reference a figure of 240 children in care are the moment who would be suitable for foster families?

No. The Deputy asked me whether we have enough placements. I said that when we take the temporary arrangements, and children who are in particular units who we feel should be living somewhere else in a different unit, there are around 240 placements we would like to have. We would love if-----

I only have three minutes.

-----90% of children in care could be in foster care. We have about 88% at the moment.

That is very helpful. Is there a cost breakdown of how much we pay private providers per child for a place in residential care at the moment?

Yes.

Does Ms Duggan have that cost of how much we pay a private provider per child?

Yes.

Will Ms Duggan give it to me?

Does the Deputy want me to go through it for residential?

Yes, for residential.

It is good for children to live with other children so we try to establish multi-occupancy-----

Of course.

Where there is a four-bedroom placement and four young people in it - I can send the figures to the Deputy if that is more helpful-----

Yes. I just-----

It is about €6,600 per week for a young child in emergency placement. When that is dual occupancy, where only two young people can live together, the cost then increases to about €10,500 per week. A single occupancy placement, where that young person has very complex needs and has to live on their own or it is deemed they should live on their own, costs about €19,500 per week.

How much do we pay foster families per week per child?

We pay them-----

I apologise to any foster carer listening-----

I know the answer. We pay €425 for a child over 12 and under 12 it is €400. Does Ms Duggan reckon the disparity between what we pay private operators compared to what we pay foster families might actually make a difference in bringing more families in?

I will say two things to clarify that. Those costs are not just for private arrangements; they include Tusla arrangements and community and voluntary ones. In terms of the cost, that is the cost to Tusla.

We pay private, community and voluntary-----

Or our own Tusla-----

-----a very significant figure, into the multiples of thousands, and families get paid €400 or €425.

There is not one foster carer I have met that I think is doing it for money.

I do not believe anybody is doing it for money.

They are doing it as a commitment.

However, I imagine a consideration people make as to whether they can open up their home to a vulnerable child would be the cost involved.

We would continuously-----

That seems extraordinary to me.

-----advocate for foster carers to be better-----

Absolutely. I am just making a point more broadly.

In terms of children being groomed into childhood criminality, what is the structure in place? The only real nationwide report we have is the Greentown report from 2018, which captured that approximately 1,000 young people are being groomed into criminality at any one time. Presumably, Tusla does not have figures for children in its care who it believes have been groomed into criminality.

In 2021, we set up a new reporting mechanism with An Garda Síochána for cases where we were concerned about children being sexually exploited. We have the data for children either living at home in the community who we are concerned about and children who are in care where we feel there is a risk they are being sexually exploited. That gives us almost a fast track into a single point in the national Garda system to be able to act and look at a sharing of information. In the case of any other child where we have concerns they are at risk of being harmed, we make a Garda notification. We share with the Garda any information on the case that we gather or that becomes known to us.

Does Tusla have statistics for children who have been groomed into criminality by coercion, including threats, or as a result of poverty?

There is a balance of whether it is suspected or proven. Mr. Brophy would be able to speak to this better than I can, in terms of the relationship with An Garda. We can talk about the number of Garda notifications we make.

Perhaps Ms Duggan will submit that information in writing after the meeting.

I return to my question about aftercare supports, particularly with housing. Will the witnesses clarify who determines or how is it determined who gets the aftercare allowance? Is it the child if they remain in full-time education? The challenge that has been presented to me is that if a young adult ages out of foster care, but is still in full-time education and would like to be considered for a HAP rental scheme, some local authorities will not accept that application from the young person if they are not in receipt of aftercare and do not have an income of their own. How is it determined who is in receipt of the allowance? Is it possible for the young adult to be in receipt of the allowance?

I have looked at a good few of those applications and have never come across a case where the aftercare allowance was a bar to a council facilitating that to happen. I stand to be corrected; I would have no problem with that. Each of those arrangements would be made individually with a young person. However, if a young person needed to get a HAP placement and to get on the capital assistance scheme, CAS, which is specifically for aftercare, that has certainly never been a barrier. You do not need an income to be entitled to go on that scheme.

In the case of a constituent who was in touch with me, that is exactly her challenge. It is that the young person was doing their leaving certificate as they turned 19.

Will the Deputy send on the details?

Exactly, she should send us the details. That would be good.

That should not be happening because she was genuinely worried about it.

Will the Deputy send us the details?

Yes. I thank the witnesses. That is very helpful. The local authority in question said "No". She applied and was told by the local authority that it will not accept a young person because they do not have an income of their own as the aftercare allowance is going to the foster parent. That is just so I explain it fully and properly.

That should not be the case.

That should not be the case for a child in care.

We can certainly make representations for her.

I would like to hear the witnesses responses to two questions. I welcome that the alternative care policy is person-centred and cross-departmental. That is probably one of the biggest challenges. Deputy Callaghan asked for clarity on housing. I have no doubt the same applies in education and health with regard to the various needs. Is there any clear ask the witnesses would love to see other than cross-departmental? Sometimes we have to nail down the Departments. If Tusla had one ask of the Department of housing on the cross-departmental question, what would it be?

Again, it is the prioritisation of young people in terms of housing and maybe dedicated housing within the housing supply for young people coming out of aftercare. The Department has had huge stakeholder engagement. It has met with young people in the care system and in aftercare. I do not want to be the loudest voice speaking, but from what I observe, that would be the ask. I do not want to underestimate. We are working with the Department of the Taoiseach on the homelessness action plan at the moment. We work closely with the Department of housing on the prioritisation of care leavers for CAS. We have made great progress over the past year with the Department of further and higher education on a scheme it is running on the identification of care leavers on the technological university side. It is led by Munster Technological University to start. Progress has been made and there is awareness. It is about building momentum. As regards the Department of Health, the ask would be prioritised access to psychological support, disability services or mental health services.

I think Deputy O'Sullivan was a little taken aback when he did not realise that there was not that prioritisation, whether with disabilities or mental health. That is a whole conversation by itself outside of this committee. I want to talk about emergency placements. I am referring to emergency placements of a child in care who is presenting with sensory needs, behavioural needs or has a disability the foster carer might find difficult. There may be a lack of other community supports for it. It could also be somebody with enduring mental health difficulties. Will Ms Duggan tell me about those emergency placements that find themselves in emergency departments, and a row takes place about who funds what? She could even just tell me about getting to the emergency department.

I first reassure the Senator that under Tusla's revised joint protocol with the HSE, we no longer have any young person where there is any dispute about the funding. We have worked closely with HSE colleagues and arranged, under the placement, that if it is 50:50 funding, the funding is not a challenge. Great progress has been made on that with the HSE, with the support of colleagues with responsibility for disabilities. If any of our children presented with any of those behaviours, we would take them to an emergency department. As the corporate parent, that is what Tusla does. If we become so concerned that we are not able to manage, either in foster care or residential care, we have to go through the emergency department route if it is out of hours and there are not supports available. Our staff would travel with the young people. We no longer have people left in hospitals or Garda stations, which was a feature of the care system a number of years ago.

Can I just finish that point?

I am not going to be able to stop you, Senator.

Where I was going with this is that sometimes young people are in a placement that can no longer sustain them and they need access, through the emergency department, to get more of a residential placement, maybe in disability services, which could be for long-term care. However, the foster family has supported them for so long and then find themselves accessing it. My worry is that children end up in hospital beds when, in fact, they need to be in a care setting. How do we get to that decision point of where that child goes next and how they are supported?

Again, I will be honest with the Senator. We have young people who are challenging for foster carers, like any parent would be with particular concerns they have. Where a young person goes into hospital, our absolute commitment is to make sure they will not be in hospital beds when they do not need to be in them. However, there is a small number of them - maybe one or two at any point in time - where there may not be an agreement on what is the right discharge for that young person. We absolutely recognise our responsibility if the child is in care. We are responsible for providing the residential placement. However, if that child's needs are complex at a particular point in time, we may advocate for inpatient admission to a CAMHS unit or specific access to a disability service. It is about working with colleagues and, as I said, there has been huge progress working with the HSE. I met a couple of hundred foster carers over the past couple of weeks and the number one challenge they raised with me was communication, engagement and feeling valued and partnered.

The other one was being able to access psychological and therapeutic supports for children in their care.

Last week, I attended a briefing in the audiovisual room by FASD Ireland. I was aware of foetal alcohol spectrum disorder in children because I had foster children from Tusla who had that diagnosis. There are no formal statutory diagnosis guidelines in the Department of Health. Will the witnesses do whatever they need to do to join the dots between their organisation and the Department of Health to get that formally diagnosed? People have to get an independent diagnosis in the UK, Spain or wherever. The witnesses will have come across it through their social workers. Can they give me some hope that they will do that?

I attended the FASD conference in Ennis this year. I and Aaron Swift, a psychologist who works with FASD in Oberstown, went down to talk. We have had a good bit of communication with the HSE about this. It has a public health campaign going out through pharmacies at the moment about alcohol, the association with pregnancy and the incidence of FASD. The clear message is no alcohol, either for men or women, is safe preceding pregnancy. It is associated with incidences of FASD. It is a public health piece we need to get out there. There is one consultant in Mullingar, Professor Sharif, who has been trained in a Washington model of diagnosis.

She was there.

She was there, exactly. She is doing this on a private basis. There is a requirement to set up a pathway. That is complex. It is another disease pathway that needs to be there for diagnosis. We do a lot with our own therapeutic teams, be they the regional teams or ACTS teams, in terms of special care, speech and language, OT and other assessments. It requires a multidisciplinary assessment.

I am talking about children with behavioural issues, aggression and things like that. I am particularly talking about children in care. It is about joining the dots between Tusla and the Department of Health to make this official and statutory.

We advocate for this because we are conscious of this for children in care, particularly. I have experience of dealing with this over the past 25 years. I have been looking to get this developed, like the Senator. I appreciate her experience in this. The HSE is taking this in line with its disability approach. It is looking at a continuum of disability and this is on that continuum. Rather than focusing on diagnosis, it is about supporting these children and giving them the advice to live well where they are. We are supporting that as we go along and we want a clinical diagnosis pathway as well.

What is the current staffing gap in Tusla, particularly in respect of social workers?

We have the highest numbers of social workers we have ever had. One of the challenges we had up to two years ago was supply. There were 200 to 220 social workers per year qualifying in Ireland to cover all public and private services. We worked hard in conjunction with UCC to develop an apprenticeship programme where you earn as you learn: three days a week in Tusla, two days a week in college, and qualify through the apprenticeship scheme with the support of the apprenticeship office. Tomorrow is a great day for us. The first of our graduate social workers are qualifying-----

Congratulations to them. What is the current gap, though?

On the front line at the moment, between social work and social care in our community services, it is about 400 staff.

That is around the same number Tusla gave the committee in November. It has not improved.

It is in or around that. We are doubling the supply of apprentices. We think it will take about three years to get through. If I had all the money in the world today, I could not recruit them.

What is the annual turnover?

Is that of social workers?

Yes.

In the past three years, we have seen significant retention. We are up at about 95% staying, so turnover is about 5%. Retention has increased significantly in the past three years.

Ms Duggan mentioned the new structures in place, so I will get parochial. What does that mean for the counties of Cavan and Monaghan. Specifically, what does it mean for children in the care of Tusla? How many more have qualified social workers allocated to them? How many do not? What were the corresponding numbers prior to the reconfiguration? I hope that makes sense.

I will commit to getting the Cathaoirleach that in writing. Through the reform programme we went from 17 areas to 30 networks. Cavan-Monaghan is one area. Why did we do this reform programme? We knew there was huge disparity in caseload numbers, waiting lists and resources. Resources had never been allocated in line with need, which meant there was not timely access - all of those sorts of things. Through our reform programme, we will have developed the first public sector resource allocation model in Ireland and, I understand, in Europe. We have taken all the demand factors in terms of demographics, population and socio-economics. We have taken resources to match the geographical boundaries and come up with a consistent formula across the country. It looks to minimum requirements. For example, what does Cavan-Monaghan need to meet demand for Tusla services? It also meant we had to equalise out staffing and children in care numbers. We met with the teams yesterday. Cavan-Monaghan has seen an increase in the number of children in care. We had children from Cavan-Monaghan in care in other parts of the country and they have been transferred back into the care of the Cavan-Monaghan team. We are working to look at resources. When we talk about----

Is it fair to say there is a higher proportion that do not have qualified social workers allocated post reconfiguration?

It is very small. Cavan-Monaghan may be slightly higher, but I will get the exact data and send it to the Cathaoirleach. It has equalised the country so every area has almost the same. I can show the committee the before and after data. Previously, 50% of areas had more than the other 50%. I will take Cork for example. I met area managers yesterday. One of the area managers in Cork told me since we implemented the reform on 1 January, their waiting list has been cut by 50%.

Has any area increased?

Yes, Cavan-Monaghan. There have been about three networks where the number of children in care has increased. We now have the model to tell us that area needs resources and another area might not need resources. We never had that information before. We are working with the teams to ensure equal access to services across the country.

With members' indulgence, I welcome David French, who is attending the committee for the second week in a row. It is a better attendance rate than some members. The committee has been dealing with Committee Stage of the guardianship Bill. That legislation will place huge responsibility on Tusla. I want to get a sense of Tusla's preparedness and how it intends to approach that. Will the witnesses outline Tusla's approach when a child is taken into care in the context of a criminal charge against a parent or guardian? How does Tusla monitor court proceedings? Are there circumstances where Tusla intervenes in terms of paying legal fees? Is there an official position in Tusla regarding relatives of a child, other than the person being criminally charged, seeking notice status? Does Tusla generally support that in court or oppose it? Is there a standard approach to that?

I will ask Mr. Brophy to talk through the process from a practice perspective. Ms Benson can speak to the changes in the requirements of Tusla.

It is extremely complex. I have great sympathies for families in that situation, particularly for children. That relationship with a parent will always be there, be it a dysfunctional one or a positive one.

How that is handled is complex. It is about building relationships with those families. As an orientation, we want to keep children within their family and extended family if we can. Therefore, the network and the relatives around a child are very important. Where there is a risk to a child, particularly in a tragic situation like this, we would certainly want to do everything we can to have people close to that child, whom the child knows, involved in the child's care. These are the people who will be taking the most appropriate decisions for that child. The legislation will support us in how we work through that.

The Chair asked about preparedness. We are involved in a lot of these situations already. This legislation will give us another piece of legislation that we can use to support the safety of the child. The Chair also asked about the relatives. We will certainly be working to keep those children with their relatives. Ms Benson may wish to comment on the law piece.

We have engaged extensively with the Department of justice and we have given our feedback in relation to it. The question of family members being part of it will be assessed on a case-by-case basis and will be looked at by the court. As Mr. Brophy said, we want to support family members in these applications. Ultimately, we will have to await the outcome. We have looked at a number of cases that might arise, and we will also have to look at removals or restrictions, which are things we have to consider in all the circumstances of the cases. We will just have to continue with our feedback to the Department of justice through our parent Department and work through it.

The legislation will allow Tusla to make a determination as to whether to make an application to the court. That is in a case where one parent has murdered another. Who will make that decision? Has that structural work within Tusla been done?

Is it a question of who within Tusla would make that decision?

How will that decision be made?

It would be assessed based on each child’s case. It will be done by the social workers in relation to what-----

Is it an individual social worker?

The structure has to be put in place.

The numbers are very low. Certainly, in the conversations we have had, as Ms Benson said, it is engagement with our parent Department and, through it, with the Department of justice. It is certainly around working with the social worker and having a national structure in place. As we would when there is new legislation coming in, we would look at responsibility not falling to just one person. It is a shared opportunity for the reflection that is needed in making the best decision in the best interests of the child.

We are not at all concerned about our ability to implement this legislation because the numbers are very small. As Mr. Brophy said, it is about the complexity and making sure we give all of the information to the court, which makes the determination in these cases anyway. We do not make the determination. The court makes the determination.

I have already taken enough advantage of my position. I will conclude. I thank the members for their indulgence. I propose that we publish the opening statement on the committee's website. Is that agreed? Agreed. I sincerely thank the Tusla representatives for taking part in our meeting today on a number of important matters.

Is it agreed that the committee go into private session to deal with a number of housekeeping matters? Agreed.