James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Troy for his comments. His concerns are shared. We have discussed this at length and it may be one of the reasons we are only now coming to Committee Stage. The Deputy is right that the fact there are no criminal sanctions might be perceived as a weakness. However, we must consider a practicality around resources. The Children First Bill does not contain the criminal sanctions proposed in the original published heads. As Deputy Troy pointed out, there was to have been an offence. However, we took legal advice, which suggested that in order to do it in a legally sound manner, the Bill would also have to provide for very significant operational complexity, including the operation of an inspection regime. After detailed consideration of what an inspection regime would involve, we decided to remove the criminal sanction.

It was the view of my Department that introducing an inspection regime would mean diverting significant Child and Family Agency resources away from front-line core child protection work in a manner which does not reflect areas of greatest risk to children and young people. As time passes, it will be reviewed. At an administrative level, it is expected that all Departments and their agencies, through the Children First interdepartmental group, will require compliance with Children First in order to qualify for State funding. We do not want to instigate the very expensive inspection regime which would be necessary if we were to fine people or have criminal sanctions because it would divert significant resources away from at-risk children.

We would like to point out to parents and people who use the services that they are now empowered to ask for this child safeguarding statement and if it is not present, they can report it to the Child and Family Agency, which will take a certain series of actions to ensure the statement is made available. If the service continues to fail to make it available, the agency will put it on a register of name and shame. Nobody involved in delivering any service, whether community, not-for-profit or for profit wants to be on a list that states this service is not up to scratch and, therefore, one should not use it. There is a great deal of power in this, if parents use it, and they will get support. We will continue to keep it under review. If we find that the name and shame register does not deliver what is required, we will have to go back to the drawing board.

I am not going to be political about this but there are limited resources. The Child and Family Agency is only now up and running. There are major child protection issues to be addressed and we have debated them often enough in the other Chamber. It would not be wise at this juncture to divert scarce resources to a new inspection regime when there are greater priorities to be addressed. I think the power of name and shame will prove very successful but I am open to reviewing it and I am sure whoever succeeds me in this position will review it, if it is found not to be successful. I thank Deputy Troy for pointing it out because we deliberated on it long and hard.