Ms Nuala Ward:

A key issue is with regard to the implementation of the Children First Act 2015. As the committee will no doubt be aware, the Act sets out very clear responsibilities for people who run direct provision centres with regard to having a relevant person to guide staff on how to manage referrals of child protection concerns. Having mandated persons means that there is an obligation to report any concerns. Obviously, to do that all staff need to be trained. Everybody working in the centre needs to understand what their responsibilities are in order that the whole community is keeping an eye out for these children. We found that was not in place. When we looked at it at the time of our investigation, 500 staff members were yet to have received training in Children First guidelines. In fairness to IPAS, we understand it is now taking that on board and accelerating that training, and in particular doing it online. That will be a key help. Every centre is also supposed to undertake a risk assessment because every centre is different and will have particular risks. They are also supposed to complete a child safeguarding statement. Again, we could not get any reassurances that this was in place in all these centres.

In particular, we were concerned about emergency centres, as Dr. Muldoon made reference to. We strongly recommended that commercial hotels should cease providing emergency accommodation because they were not even within the very basic minimum of Children First guidelines. I thank the Chairman for that really important and critical question.