Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I will start where the Minister finished. The Minister says people will do whatever they can to find out who they are. We have seen that through the strength and resilience of many of these survivors. While they are doing whatever they can, I hope that we are not trying to put roadblocks in their way. For many, it feels like they are pushing a stone uphill. Hopefully, we can try and remove some of those hills for them and, as the Minister says, look at the legislation and ensure that it is supporting them in doing whatever they can to find out who they are instead of putting the roadblocks in place.

I echo the points raised by Senator McGreehan in that there are stakeholder groups who feel annoyed at present because they have not been consulted with. They have not been part of any conversations and they have concerns that they are not part of the public debate up to this point. I will talk to the Minister on another occasion about some of those groups, but that consultation needs to be conducted far and wide. Perhaps we need to explore innovative routes to ensure that we are bringing everyone into that consultation because we need to put the survivors at the centre of this once again. That point of view and that support needs to be at the centre of this. It has drifted away from that and that needs to be the centrepiece.

The Minister talks about the increased funding for youth work. That is, of course, welcome. I am involved with a Garda youth diversion project in Crumlin which has been doing good outreach work in relation to anti-social behaviour in the areas it covers. The outreach work is good. It can happen late at night. It can happen in areas where the young people are getting into trouble. It reaches people where they are instead of waiting for them to come to the centre, which might not always happen. While it is shown to work, the reality is that it takes from the work that happens in the centre because it is staff intensive. One is looking at a situation where projects are choosing between effective outreach and more general centre-based work. It should not be a choice. It needs to be both. If we can look for funding lines that would specifically fund outreach services on top of existing youthreach services, even on a short-term basis, the outreach services can be targeted to pull people who are not already engaging in to the centre-based programmes to improve the ultimate centre-based programmes.

The other matter I want to pick up on is Tusla. The Minister says correctly that he has made a significant budget available for Tusla to meet its statutory function. I have raised with the Minister on numerous occasions my concern about fostering recruitment and the dangers there of Tusla not being able to fulfil its statutory function because it is not recruiting enough foster carers.

I note also the Minister is still wearing his fostering button and I assume he is alive to these concerns. What are we doing to ensure that Tusla will spend that money on fostering recruitment?

The other issue I want to raise is in-house therapeutic supports in Tusla for children in care. In parliamentary questions, the therapeutic hub in Dublin North-Central has been highlighted as an exemplar of excellent work done to support foster carers and children in care. It is an excellent service. I encourage the Minister to engage with Tusla to ensure this money is being routed towards funding more such services. I also ask him to visit this service and meet the people who deliver it, the social workers who rely on it to support young people and, if possible given the nature of the service and the privacy required, some of the foster carers or perhaps even the children who have benefited from it to hear directly from them how such a service could be transformative in Tusla's ability to fulfil its statutory function.

I am conscious that the clock is ticking. It has been suggested that there are unmarked graves not only in Bessborough but in plenty of other places. Will the legislation the Minister is talking about in relation to the Tuam site be sufficient to cover all potential exhumations that are required or will we need to more legislation for other specific sites? The Minister may only have time to answer my last question. If so, I can respond to the others in writing.