Ms Patricia Finlay:

I have been a practitioner and I have been in homes where gardaí have had to remove children. I emphasise very much that the majority of our social workers have five years of training to prepare for these events in supporting children and their parents for the trauma, separation and loss being brought to any child. It is an extremely delicate balancing act and, unfortunately, we must make those difficult decisions every day and work closely with gardaí on that. There was a question on protocol. The specific protocol we spoke about today relates to one that exists between the HSE and Tusla. We work very closely with the HSE on those cases. Does it need to be better? Perhaps we need more formal structures and this protocol will support such structures.

With regard to the Garda, Tusla has almost completed a protocol on working with gardaí. It is there. We have mentioned the children and young people services committee a number of times. Under the prevention, partnership and family support programme that Tusla has, the principle is to have everyone around the table. The practice of working is described as meitheal. It is not for child protection cases but rather where a family and child are in need. As people know, meitheal means bringing people together to bring home the harvest. That is really what meitheal is about. It is a team around the child to support that child and the parents. It is really important as central to that is the young person and child is asked to be at the meeting and it is conducted in a way that is child-centred. We cannot even have a meeting unless parents are part of the process. That is the ethos and approach we are taking in Tusla of very much having children and parents participating in the plan.