Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister and her officials for attending the committee this morning.

Will the Minister confirm that a recently appointed manager in quality control and assurance in the Child and Family Agency has already left? If this is the case, will she explain why? It would be appropriate that all Health Service Executive staff moving to this agency must be interviewed so that the agency has the appropriate skillsets to deal with the front-line issues that will arise. Will the Minister give her views on this?

I welcome the fact the Children Act will be introduced in two weeks. We facilitated additional time for this Bill in the hope it will address concerns over what was omitted in the original legislation. For example, we hope it will specify inter-agency co-operation, deal with the provision of child and adolescent mental health nurses and so forth. Will the Minister confirm that these areas will be addressed?

It is disappointing that the adoption (tracing and information) Bill has still not been published. Like others, I have been requesting it for 18 months. I hope it now receives the necessary attention and priority.

A person's basic and fundamental right is the right of his or her identity, and this needs to be addressed.

On preschool services, I acknowledge there has been a greater emphasis on this area and I welcome this. In the Dáil I asked about additional inspectors prior to the summer recess. The Minister, in consultation with her colleague, the Minister, Deputy Howlin, was to receive authorisation for additional inspectors. Can she update us on that this morning? Has every area got an inspector now? In terms of ensuring that there is an appropriate training fund, can she signal whether she would be in a position to launch a training fund for this sector after the budget next week?

On the children and young people policy framework, in reply to a parliamentary question on 20 June 2012, the Minister indicated that document would run from 2012 to 2017. It has now been pushed out to run from 2014 to 2018. Can she commit to that this morning?

On the Irish youth justice service, in May of this year the Department was summonsed to court to explain the lack of capacity for youth offenders. I acknowledge that the Minister has done a great deal of work on the Oberstown development and future capacity should not be an issue. However it is a major issue at present. Only three weeks ago, in Limerick, a young offender who was a threat to himself and to the wider community had to be released on bail on a number of occasions because there was nowhere to send him. On his third occasion before the courts, the method to deal with this teenager was to put him in a public ward in a hospital from where he absconded. For a guy who was a threat to the wider society, the State's answer was to put him in a public ward in a public hospital. That is not appropriate. It is not right.