Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am very pleased to have the opportunity to address the Joint Committee on Health and Children again this morning in the quarterly review of the activities of my Department. Today's meeting provides another opportunity to bring Deputies and Senators up to date on the developments in my Department since we last met in July. Members are familiar with a number of the initiatives so I will summarise what is in the text.

I published the Child and Family Agency Bill and it is due to come before the committee on 22 October. We will also introduce amendments to deal with the changes to the preschool sector during the course of the committee discussions. Those are the changes relating to the need to register and the basic qualifications that will be required. The Bill will give inspectors more authority to demand changes so that the services have the highest standards and to ensure that it will not be necessary to go to court to demand the changes.

The board members have been appointed to the family support agency. The work of establishing the agency continues. As the committee is aware, a huge amount of work has been done in setting up what is effectively a shadow agency in the past year, with a reduction in the number of managers from 36 to 17. A new management team is in place and all of the HR issues have been addressed. A total of 4,000 staff have been informed they will be employees of the new agency. Everything is working towards the establishment of the new agency in the new year and considerable progress has been made. I thank everyone who has been involved in that regard. As the committee is aware, the new child and family agency brings together children and family services, the Family Support Agency and the National Education Welfare Board.

In terms of legislative priorities for this Dáil session, in addition to bringing the Child and Family Agency Bill through the Houses work is continuing on the preparation of the Children First Bill and good progress has been made. Deputy Troy inquired about the children (amendment) Bill. I hope it will be published in November. Much progress has been made in that regard. I hope the Bill will go through the House before the end of the year. The Government has approved the heads and general scheme of the children (amendment) Bill 2013. That will provide for the amalgamation of the three different units on the Oberstown site. It will also ensure there is improved management and operational efficiencies on the site. Building work has commenced on the Oberstown site. All of the contract details were finalised in recent weeks, including the various bonds which were complex and had to be negotiated. All of the planning has been done and the building work has commenced. In effect, next year we will be able to move 17 year olds from St. Patrick's Institution and there will no longer be 16 year olds or 17 year olds in this country in an adult prison.

I wish also to ask the committee to discuss the heads of the adoption (tracing and information) Bill once it is published. This legislation touches on very complex legal and constitutional issues. At its core is the competing right to the privacy of a natural mother and the interest of an adopted person in establishing their history and identity. I believe it will be necessary to have an open discussion on the matter in committee so that the various issues can be teased out. Many of the organisations representing people who have been adopted will want to give evidence to the committee. That should be an important part of the public consideration of the issues. It is clear that we have moved very far in terms of the concept of open adoption and people wanting to get as much information as possible but there are extremely difficult constitutional issues relating to privacy in this country. There are high expectations of the legislation but difficult, complex legal parameters are involved and that will require a good discussion and fairly complex committee hearings in order to tease out precisely what is involved in an Irish context. Other countries are doing it but they do not have a Constitution, as we have. I suggest that the committee would take the heads of the legislation and hold public hearings to examine the constitutional and personal issues involved in trying to develop the legislation.
We were due to submit the third and fourth consolidated report to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child. Both reports have been completed and forwarded to the UN. We will be called to report in due course. The third report was delayed but I am pleased that both reports have been completed. They have outlined the various changes on which we have embarked in the Department and the various initiatives that have been taken.

My Department is progressing the preschool quality agenda to improve quality in early years services and enhance the regulatory environment. Changes to the Child Care Act 1991 will be discussed by this committee on 22 October. It will include increasing the qualifications of all staff in preschool services to a minimum standard at FETAC level 5, improving the quality and curricular supports for preschool services when implementing the Síolta framework and Aistear curriculum and implementing new national quality standards.

Last week, a successful conference was held with the NCCA, National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, and Early Childhood Ireland on implementing these new standards. Various early years intervention projects have evidence of how successfully the Aistear programme is implemented. We do need to establish a mentoring scheme in preschools. Pilot projects have been completed in this regard and it is a question of ensuring we have the budget to roll out the full mentoring scheme. Later today, I will launch the report of the expert group report on early years strategy. I pay tribute to the group’s chair, Dr. Eilís Hennessy, department of psychology, UCD, and its members.

Since July almost 1,000 preschool inspection reports have been published online, which accounts for almost 40% of all preschools. Officials in my Department and the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel fast-tracked legislative proposals to the provision of preschool services so they could be brought forward on Committee Stage of the Child and Family Agency Bill 2013. I thank the officials involved.

In addition, my Department, in conjunction with the preschool inspectorate, is working to develop new protocols on regulatory compliance to provide greater clarity and consistency of approach in the way inspection reports deal with findings of serious non-compliance as opposed to minor breaches and full compliance. National quality standards for preschool services will be launched before the end of the year. This will form part of the new regulatory environment and inspections system.

Before the end of this year I intend to publish my Department’s national policy framework for children and young people. The framework will run from 2014 to 2018, encompassing children and young people from birth to age 25. It will be supported by a number of more detailed strategies for specific age cohorts including the early years strategy.

I made a presentation to Atlantic Philanthropies requesting it to continue to support area-based poverty initiatives. I am pleased it gave us €14 million to continue in this work. The Government has matched this funding, meaning we can continue the work in nine new areas, as well as the three existing areas, Tallaght, Ballymun and Darndale. We will be identifying the areas that will benefit from this intervention programme over the next three years, based on objective criteria. I hope to be able to bring proposals for the extension of the scheme over the next two weeks. It is important that local organisations in the areas chosen work together to deliver the best outcomes. We have good research from Tallaght, Ballymun and Darndale about what interventions work. These will be mainstreamed into services and other projects the future.

There are 16 children services committees. I hope to build on these in the coming months with a view to establishing them in every county. We must ensure all relevant organisations are involved in the children services committees.

Recruitment of more staff is continuing to facilitate the expansion of the national children’s detention facility at Oberstown. On sexual abuse services for children and young people, yesterday I addressed an event organised by the Rape Crisis Network where I confirmed my commitment to the development of a co-ordinated national approach to sexual abuse services for children and young people. We have not had a national approach in the past. I announced the recruitment of four regional co-ordinators for services for children demonstrating sexually harmful behaviour. The report published by the Rape Crisis Network yesterday found 37% of perpetrators of sexual violence against child survivors were themselves aged under 18. We need to develop an approach to this age cohort. The recruitment of the four co-ordinators was recommended by the Ryan report and it will happen soon.