Ms Maria Corbett:

The particular difficulty from the Irish perspective is with the requirement for a country to be an EU member. There is not much we can do with the UK now becoming a third country. There is the prospect that the EU regulation might be amended to allow third countries to engage so there may be something in the future. The representatives of the Bar of Ireland might like to deal with what might happen with how the courts may engage given their closeness under the common law. There is uncertainty as to what will happen to some of the arrangements we have at the moment. Whereas today we use specific legislation, we will need to go back to bilateral or other arrangements. With some of the High Court cases on secure care - the special care orders where we place children from Ireland in the UK - there is a sense maybe there of the places not being available.

There is uncertainty. Children may be placed using other legislation, wardship and bilateral arrangements going back to what we had before the EU regulation. We are raising the matter because the EU regulation has many safeguards in place and has a clear structure. We are going from a position of clarity to uncertainty. From a legislative perspective, I am not sure what can be done in the immediate future. However, we can come back to the Deputy on that.