Dr. Niall Muldoon:

Senator van Turnhout asked about the number and types of complaints. The types of complaints have been fairly consistent over time. The majority of complaints we receive come from the area of the Department of Education and Skills, it consistently has been between 40% to 50%. The most recent figure was about 45%. The majority of children come under that remit. As I said in my opening statement 25% of our work relates to the Child and Family Agency. The fact that there is now an agency with 4,000 staff dealing with cases in that area, as opposed to the HSE with 80,000 staff, will help us enormously. We have hopes that the new agency will be more agile and more able to cope with the difficulties that we come across and to date our engagement with them has been very constructive. The HSE has now devolved the Child and Family Agency into a separate body and that is a big learning curve. The establishment of the Department of Children and Youth Affairs is also a significant step forward. The child is becoming closer and closer to the centre of the work of the public bodies. That is very encouraging.

The role of the Oireachtas in managing the recommendations coming from the Office of the Ombudsman for Children is that given the children and family services are evolving into a separate agency, we felt it was time for us to pull all our learning together and put it on record so that in the Oireachtas there is the ability to look back at the work we have done and the recommendations we have made and use that in a constructive manner to challenge the Child and Family Agency to ensure it has a standard against which progress can be measured. That was our intention when we presented the meta-analysis and these other reports.

On the industrial relations at the Child and Family Agency, to the best of my knowledge that has changed. It is something the committee might need to confirm with the Child and Family Agency but my understanding from the Children First report, which is now four years old, is that the industrial relations issues have been settled, but it would be no harm to check that out when the agency comes before the joint committee.

On the question of the engagement of the Ombudsman for Children's Office with the Department of Children and Youth Affairs and Tusla, as part of the meta-analysis we met with the then Minister and her officials as well as the officials from the Child and Family Agency and that was a very constructive meeting. We found ourselves in a position in which there are very positive responses to our recommendations. It has set out clear deadlines and quarterly targets for meeting the recommendations. We hope this will be overseen by the Oireachtas. It has been a very positive engagement from our point of view. We hope this new agency will be a major step forward for the care of the children that we are looking after.

Senator van Turnhout also inquired about the Roma children. I cannot comment on that at this stage.