Professor Pat Dolan:

I thank the committee for its very kind invitation to appear before it. In my role as UNESCO chair for children, youth and civic engagement and as director of the UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre at NUI Galway, I was invited to participate in the task force which met up until to June of last year in advance of the compilation of the report on the design of the new child and family support agency. I thought the best way I could use my presentation would be by making some comments in respect of that matter and the new agency and by highlighting some issues which I believe will emerge as we move forward.

The fact that a referendum on the rights of children was passed is incredibly important. That was a crucial victory and the margin relating to it has nothing to do with the fact that we now have what we had sought for the past 20 years or more. In legislative terms, it took from the enactment of the Children Act 1908 until 1991 before legislation relating to children was even introduced. The fact that we have recognition of children in our Constitution is incredibly important.

I wholeheartedly welcome the establishment of the child and family support agency because this development, should it come to pass, means that at long last we will have one agency with all the key players in children's lives involved. Despite the fact that we are living in a period of austerity, I am a realist and I am of the view that the overwhelming evidence from research - including the work done by Professor James Heckman, a Nobel laureate, who is sometimes based in UCD - is that if one wants to solve the issues and concerns relating to child poverty, neglect and abuse, one must spend at least 20% of one's budget on prevention and early intervention. The evidence to which I refer is to a factor of 29 in early years. In other words, for every €1 spent in early years is up to a factor of 29 if one invests in prevention. If one considers the cost to the State of legal expenses alone in the cases of some children who have been through the system and if one contemplates what one could do with that money in the context of prevention or early intervention, the results are quite astounding. I am referring here to millions of euro as opposed to low-cost interventions.

I wish to make two or three comments in respect of the new agency. First, I have some concerns about which I am very happy to go public. One of those concerns is that not all the professional disciplines which should be under the system may necessarily be coming under it quickly enough or at all.

I have concerns, for example, that there may be some reticence in regard to the provision of child psychology services. There are also some concerns about child and adolescent mental health services and in regard to public health nursing. This could be a very serious matter. To put it bluntly, it is important that all the services come under the one agency as this affects children's lives. Next month will be the 20th anniversary of the Kilkenny incest report. Two or three of the key recommendations contained in that report were also recommendations contained in the Madonna House report, the Kelly Fitzgerald report, the Roscommon incest report and the report into child deaths and one of those recommendations was that agencies must work together in one organisation. This is crucial.

A second recommendation is that the voice of children must be heard, listened to and acted on. That is crucial also, and that is why the children's rights referendum was so needed in this country. My overall point is that I have some concerns that the agency may not bring in all those that it should bring in.

The third point I want to make is that yesterday the UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre, together with the Prevention and Early Intervention Network, in collaboration with the Children's Rights Alliance, hosted a fairly major symposium on the development of the agency. There is strong concern that cutbacks on the ground are affecting services and affecting children negatively and this may be getting smothered over, either intentionally or unintentionally, by the development of the agency. The importance of providing services to children is key. This is not only in regard to issues related to the ongoing problem of not having an outside 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. social work service, I am talking about the whole array of child and family support agencies and services that could be brought on board. I must highlight the fact that children are suffering as we speak because of cutbacks. It is not any more complex than that.

My colleagues, Mr. Fergus Finlay and Mr. Sean Campbell, will probably elaborate on this, but our research centre, based on the highest possible standard of a randomised control trial, proved two services are effective but neither of them are being made scalable or supported. I am talking about the Wizard of Words programme in Barnardos and the Big Brother Big Sister mentoring programme in Foróige. They are proven programmes, involving a low cost of less than €1,000 per child, that constitute amazingly effective prevention and early intervention services that need to be supported. As I pointed out earlier, if we invest now we will get the benefit later.

We have just come through the horror of hearing in the proceedings of the Dáil the details of what the women in Magdalen laundries suffered. We must ask ourselves the question: in 20 or 30 years time, what will be the equivalent issue? I would hate to think it would be the fact that we did not act on the evidence of what works in children's lives and that we did not take the necessary steps now, despite the austerity in the country. I am not being unrealistic about the challenges that face the members as legislators but what kind of a civic society do we want for our children? There is enough evidence on the street to show that we must act now, not only in emergency cases, but also in terms of prevention. I thank the members for their attention.