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

Let me address some of the points made by various Deputies and Senators. The board has had its first meeting. It will continue with the work under the chairmanship of Ms Norah Gibbons. Once the legislation goes through the Dáil and Seanad and is finalised, the board will be called the board of the child and family agency. Effectively, there will be a transition to the work in question.

On Deputy Ó Caoláin's question about vacancies on the board, one more is to be filled. When that is done, the full complement will have been reached.

It is the same number as outlined in the legislation, so the current board would transition in as the board of the new agency once it is established in legislation. I hope this gives the information on the status of the establishment of the agency.

Deputy Troy asked about the adoption and tracing legislation. The delay is not for want of attention to it. I have attended a number of meetings on the development of this legislation. We have been getting ongoing legal advice from the Attorney General and other legal experts to guide the legal staff in my Department on the development of that legislation. The constitutional issue is the key. My personal view and my policy perspective is to give people as much access as possible to information on identity issues. That is best practice but the question is whether the Constitution can accommodate that and I am not absolutely sure that it can. People want this information and I want it to be supplied. That is why we will need to tease out the issues at committee hearings, so that people understand.

Deputy Troy's party introduced only a voluntary register. In the legislation I will have a statutory contact register. I will ensure all records are the responsibility of the adoption authority and are gathered together in one place. On an issue that arose yesterday, the records in Cork have all been gathered and are available to people. There is quite some demand for it and individual contact is being facilitated. Two years ago I said all the records were being brought together. There is a very big job to be done at a national level to bring all adoption records together.

There are very few records on illegal adoption. Illegal adoption was a criminal activity and the records are unavailable. Any records that exist tend to be personal records that might be held by people, doctors, hospital units or the church. In the legislation it will be statutory for everybody to declare the records they have and make them available in a central position. On identity and access to records where consent has not been given, the Constitution protects the privacy of the mother, and that issue must be teased out. We have had Supreme Court cases on this and there are some European cases at present. I would like the committee to examine these European cases and the national precedents in the Supreme Court and invite people working with the various groups of adopted people to come and make presentations. I will publish the heads of the Bill as soon as I can. Then the committee could be in a position then to go forward with the hearings. It is not for want of work. The Department's legal team and the office of the Attorney General are doing a huge amount of work on this. It has been a priority of mine to try to publish it.

We have got permission to recruit additional preschool inspectors and that will happen. Extra money will be needed to deal with extra positions but the current vacancies are being filled. That will not ensure there is comprehensive coverage of inspectors around the country, however; extra funding will be needed for that. I will return to Deputy Troy on the matter. It is probably a post-budget discussion.

I am working to find money for a mentoring fund for the preschool centre. I am not in a position to announce that now but if we want a second year of preschool we must deal with the quality issues. We must build quality and availability of suitable staff. A mentoring scheme and a training programme are essential and I am making the case for that. It sounds very simple to say that we need a training and mentoring scheme. There are monetary and staffing implications and in the current budgetary situation all of that must take its place with all the priorities every Minister is bringing to the table. It is an essential element of building quality in the sector and I am working to ensure that.

I have said before at this committee that detention is a last resort for any child or young person under the age of 18. For some reason we had an increase in referrals to Oberstown around June and July. Recently we have had vacancies in Oberstown. We have created extra beds there. That is how the referrals go. We tend to get ups and downs in the numbers. I regret the situation where beds are unavailable but the courts have made more referrals. I will have discussions about that to try to understand who are the children who are being referred for detention and whether we can work more effectively at a preventative level in high support units and special care services, because sometimes the same children end up in detention. There is need for more co-ordination between the youth justice side and the care side. It is often the same children and it can be arbitrary whether they go into the criminal justice system or the care system.

Building has begun at Oberstown, which will mean we will have more beds, but we do not want to see huge numbers of children being referred for detention. It is and should be a last resort. On the other hand, if there are young people who need that facility we want to have the beds available. We do not always have beds available when the courts require them. There is a 24 hour response available to the courts so that when a vacancy becomes available and if there is a request they are matched, but it is a very fluid situation and it can sometimes be hard to match the availability of beds to the demands of the courts. The staff there are doing their very best.