I direct the House's attention to a recent disturbing report published by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC, on child trafficking in Ireland. This document exposes a hidden dark reality that our State apparatus is actively ignoring. The report reveals that child trafficking is significantly under-identified in this country. Our authorities are blind to the exploitation happening right in front of them, too often treating vulnerable child victims as simple child protection statistics rather than as victims.

The statistics are a mathematical indictment of this Government. In 2024, only ten child victims were identified in the entire State. In 2025, that number was just 18. Let us compare this with our nearest neighbour, the UK, where over 7,400 children were identified in a single year. Here, however, is the most shocking revelation. Of all the child trafficking victims identified in Ireland in 2024 and 2025, not a single one was an Irish national. This completely contradicts European and UK data, where around 80% of identified child victims are citizens exploited within their own borders. Gangs and predatory networks are actively grooming, sexually exploiting and using Irish children in residential State care for criminal activities. Yet the State is failing to identify them.

Meanwhile, our online spaces have become an unpoliced playground for groomers. The response to the technology facilitating this trafficking has completely failed to keep pace with organised crime. We have billions of euro floating around the Exchequer, yet the specialised unit tasked with investigating these horrific networks, the Garda human trafficking investigation and co-ordination Unit, is systematically starved of resources. I think we have 16 gardaí in that unit. Let us just think about that number. Can we imagine what goes undetected?

I call for an urgent debate on this report and I demand that the Minister immediately increase the number of gardaí assigned to this vital human trafficking unit before any more children are left to fall through the cracks.