Mr. Fergus Finlay:

The global figures are published every year and I can give the Chairman whatever detailed breakdown he wishes. The figures are published by Tusla and within our own published accounts. Barnardos was paid approximately €3.2 million last year in respect of the guardian ad litemservice it provides. That covered approximately 30 guardians and 800 children. On average, a guardian works with 25 children a year. Guardians are, by and large, employed as independent contractors by Barnardos on a contract for service. They earn, on average, €75,000 a year, which is the same as a social work team leader. Some earn more, some earn less. The cost to Tusla on a per child basis is approximately €4,500.

I agree with the Chairman. There are forms of care which cost very little and the best form of care is the foster care arrangement, which works well for the child and costs very little. Keeping children in care in that way in relationships that work well for them is hugely beneficial to the child and to the child's development but it is also very cost effective because the moment a child needs to go into residential care, the costs multiply significantly. If guardians can help to keep a child out of the residential care system and, particularly, out of the secure care system, they will save the State an enormous amount. That might sound like special pleading but I do not mean it to be that way.

The Chairman declared a special interest and I should also. It is intended that after this Bill is passed, there will be a tender for a national provider. Barnardos will be a competitor in that process. We may or may not be appointed. Whatever happens, what we want is that the best system will emerge. In any definition of the best system, value for money has to be included. There are no two ways around that. Some of the costs involved are indefensible and they need to be addressed.

In response to Deputy Chambers, one of the ways they will be addressed is that a requirement of the tender, as we understand it, will be that the new agency to be established will have an in-house legal resource for the precise purpose of ensuring guardians have more training and more access to advice and so on, and they will not always have to have a legal resource standing beside them when they are in court. Currently, particularly in the Dublin area, most cases involving guardians also involve a solicitor, although Ms McKittrick will know better. One in ten or 11 involves a barrister and they tend to be the more complex cases. The right way to get that cost down is to have a system in place where the provider is obliged to support the guardian with an internal resource. That would be cheaper and more effective and would result in guardians being over time much more independent of the legal profession to meet the Deputy's point.

I feel as passionately as the Chairman about the fact that every penny spent on this is not a penny spent somewhere where it is desperately needed. Like him, I have spent 30 years advocating for speech therapy and other essential services. It is a false choice to say that if children are deprived of their voice in court at a moment life changing decisions are being made about them, the speech therapy service or other support services that they need can be more easily afforded. These are not choices we should ask children to make.