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

I am pleased to have the opportunity to update the Joint Committee on Health and Children in support of its quarterly review of my Department's work. Today’s meeting provides another opportunity to bring Deputies and Senators up to date on important developments in the work of my Department since our last quarterly review in October, as well as looking ahead to the immediate future.

The President signed the Child and Family Agency Bill 2013 this week and yesterday I signed the commencement order, which means that the Child and Family Agency will be established on 1 January 2014. The Bill has been enacted and the commencement order, by way of statutory instrument, has been signed and that effectively clears the way for the establishment of the new agency. This is a historic development and a significant milestone for all of us who are concerned about child welfare services for families and child protection. It is a significant milestone in the programme for Government because it is a big initiative to transform fundamentally how we deliver child protection services. We have removed these services from the HSE and created a standalone agency with a dedicated focus on children's services and child protection.

Chairman, I want to take this opportunity to thank you and all your colleagues, particularly the party spokespersons, namely, Deputies Ó Caoláin and Troy, for the very constructive parliamentary scrutiny we have had in the development of the Bill. I believe this parliamentary scrutiny, as well discussion with NGOs, has added considerable value to the legislation. It is a solid foundation. We are all conscious of the decades where child protection services were not meeting the kind of standards we would all like to see.

We now have the necessary foundations in place and must commence the work of eliminating the fragmentation of children's services as recommended in the task force report of 2012. We must also ensure, which I am confident the legislation will do, that the agency works within a strong framework of public accountability. That is very important. Clearly, change will not happen overnight. There are many challenging issues to be addressed in terms of a changing society and the pressures on families in relation to alcohol and drug addiction, about which we have spoken previously at this committee, children's needs not being met and children needing to be taken into care. The recent publication by Dr. Carol Coulter, among others, has given everyone an insight into the precise challenges that the services are meeting on an ongoing basis.

The formation of the agency will bring together key services relevant to children and families, including child protection and welfare services currently operated by the HSE, the Family Support Agency and the National Educational Welfare Board. The agency will be tasked with achieving a new strategic focus, better management and consistency of approach so as to deliver a world-class Irish service model of child welfare and protection. It will also have statutory responsibility - this was a feature of our discussions - for ensuring that every child in the State either attends school or receives a certain minimum education. This responsibility currently comes within the remit of the National Educational Welfare Board. The challenge now is implementation. The budgetary parameters have been set out in this week’s Revised Estimates. I am now in a position to finalise and formally notify the agency of its first allocation. As members will be aware, careful planning has been under way for some months now. This is the largest public sector reform ever undertaken by a Government. The agency will have 4,000 staff and a budget of €600 million. I would like to place on the record my appreciation of the work of the staff of my Department, led by the secretary general, Mr. Jim Breslin, on this process. An enormous amount of work has been done at every level, including at HR level in terms of engagement with the unions and staff. A huge implementation plan has been put in place. In terms of accountancy, a separate budget has been put in place for the agency. One can only imagine the task it has been to separate out that budget from the HSE. In my view it has been done effectively and efficiently. As this work often goes unnoticed I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the staff for their time and effort in implementing the plan to ensure transition to the new agency on 1 January 2014.

The board of the Family Support Agency, which I appointed in September 2013, chaired by Ms. Norah Gibbons, will be, from 1 January 2014, the board of the new Child and Family Agency. Early in 2014 I will set out the performance framework for the agency, which will form the basis of its first corporate plan. The performance framework is intended to communicate the overarching values, priorities, activities and resources within which the Department will assess and track the agency’s performance. No doubt we will have an opportunity to discuss that during a meeting of this committee. This process will give transparency to the Government’s expectations for service delivery, identify changes in policy, set key service improvement priorities and create a demand for accountability for the delivery of the services in line with principles, quality standards and the resources allocated. I will keep members informed of these developments as they progress in the new year. During the course of passage of the legislation there was much discussion on issues such as performance and accountability, the need for reporting to the Minister and the setting of priorities.

The preschool quality agenda has been a topic of considerable concern within this committee. There are currently almost 2,000 preschool inspection reports now online. I have brought forward legislative changes in the Child and Family Agency Act to provide for statutory registration of all preschool services, the introduction of new enforcement powers for inspectors at pre-prosecution stage and increased penalties at District Court level for offences under the Act. New national preschool quality standards have been developed and will be launched shortly.
Minimum qualification requirements for staff working in preschool services are being increased. Budget 2014 includes an allocation of €4.5 million to establish a new national quality support service for preschool services, the recruitment of new inspectors and to support training and upskilling.

We are also presented with a wealth of valuable information from the Growing Up in Ireland surveys. I recommend that every policy maker in this country familiarise themselves with the data from that study. We are currently very data-rich. The most recent presentation by the Growing Up in Ireland study, which comprises representatives from Trinity College and the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, sets out the situation in respect of Ireland's five year olds and shows that the preschool year has been very successful in helping children to transition to primary school. It also highlights the groups of children who remain vulnerable. The committee may in the new year wish to discuss the 15% to 20% of children who need particular supports in order to thrive. We need to focus on that group. While the vast majority of children are doing well, a cohort of children are not. These are the children on which we must focus during the coming months and years.

The publication last week of a further tranche of reviews conducted by the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church, NBSCCC, are a reminder of the past consequences of inaction and failures to protect children. We know from these reports that there is now greater focus in the diocese on child protection. I welcome that my call that these reports be published has been answered and that there will be ongoing publication in this regard. There is more work to be done in relation to the congregations so that we can see precisely what is happening. I have asked for a timeframe in respect of publication of those reports. I am hopeful that by the end of next year all of the congregation reports will have been published. As members will be aware, the recently published congregation reports contain some disturbing findings. They also contain many points in relation to other countries where the orders are operating and the risks to children in those areas, which need to be followed up. I would like everybody involved to do what they can to ensure that the types of improvement brought about in Ireland in this regard are standard practice in work overseas.

I also recently launchedthe report entitled An Examination of Recommendations from Inquiries into Events in Families, their Interactions with State Services and their Impact on Policy and Practice, authored by Dr. Helen Buckley and Dr. Caroline O’Neill, which notes thatmany inquiry recommendations have acted as a mechanism for positive change. The committee might be interested in hearing first-hand about that report from Dr. Buckley and Dr. O'Neill in terms of their recommendations for moving forward and how we ought to be learning the lessons of past inquiries, which information is very helpful.

On the area-based childhood programme, the additional areas have been announced. There are now 13 areas in which the area-based childhood programme will operate. I was most impressed by the coming together of agencies in regard to what they wanted to see happening in their areas. For example, in one area in Dublin, 42 organisations came together and put forward a submission in respect of area-based support for children and families. One of the criteria for funding under this programme was such inter-agency work. It is interesting to note that when one makes inter-agency work a criterion for funding, organisations at local level are able to ensure this happens. We need to see a lot more of this. It was certainly a feature of the projects submitted. The engagement between all of the services working in particular areas was very welcome. We must now work to implement the programme. I welcome the efforts of organisations in putting together their submissions. We will continue to work with approximately 12 of the programmes in a mentoring capacity. The first group of areas will continue to be involved in the projects. There is also another a group to which we will provide mentoring so that they can get to the point at which they are equally able to deliver the types of programme that are being supported this time around.

I wish to say a brief word on detention centres for children. The major capital project has been officially launched and construction is under way. The Chairman was concerned about the campus manager. A new campus manager has been appointed by the board of management of the detention schools following an open competition and has taken up duty from the start of this month. That is a key step towards our plan to amalgamate the three existing detention schools. A relevant court case unfolded recently, as Deputies and Senators will be aware.

We are working on after-care provision and it will be included in the child care Bill, which I hope to have ready in January. Focus Ireland has welcomed the progress on after-care provision, which we are putting into legislation for the first time.

We will be publishing the national children and young people policy framework. A great deal of work has been done in my Department and with other Departments. I have recently updated the Cabinet on progress and I hope to publish the framework early in 2014. It is a framework for all of Government. The committee will have noted the section on children in the Medium Term Economic Strategy 2014-2020 document, which was published this week. It references this plan as a goal of Government. We will work from the framework, which has three different elements.

Several important Government commitments have been met by the Department, including holding the children's referendum and providing for the establishment of the Child and Family Agency. We have started the transfers from St Patrick's Institution to Oberstown and we have expanded the response to area-based poverty under the area-based childhood initiative. There will be a new phase in 2014 when, using the children and young people's policy framework, we bring further direction and energy to achieving improvements.

I hope that has given the committee some idea of the work done by the Department since we last met. I am appreciative of the work of the committee and its interest in this area.