Ms Aideen Howard:

On Deputy Costello's question about children's councils and mainstreaming child participation practice, the good news is that the State has been winning gold stars internationally for its leadership in child participation in strategy. Ireland was the first country in Europe in 2015 to have a child participation in decision-making strategy nationally. In setting up the children's council here we were inspired by that, and inspired by the good practice that already existed and was being led by the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, as it was known at the time. It seems to me that the challenge more nationally is to reach into everyday settings and into everyday decision making so that children's voices are heard consistently throughout all sorts of decision making, whether that is in the school system, in after-school settings, or other settings. Our experience has been very positive, but we are also a very small organisation where we can create our own types of practices and protocols. We have embedded child participation into our strategy and into our strategic delivery. We try at every opportunity to share our practice with those who are interested and we have had great support from our chief funder, which is the Arts Council, in actually assisting us in sharing that practice and disseminating it as widely as possible. We have also had support from the Department of Children in that regard.

Our big ambition would be to mainstream the practice beyond the children's council and out into every aspect of everything we do, be it policy making, board reporting and governance, or artistic programming. There is a lot of traction around this area at the moment, and there is a lot of popular support for it. I would encourage any organisation that may be dealing with the committee to consider it. It is very clearly part of our responsibility as duty bearers to fulfil and protect these children's rights, to be heard in the first instance and in my case to deliver their right to art and culture at the same time.