Ms Marissa Ryan:

I wanted to share with Senator Ruane the new Barnardos pilot project, which is supposed to look at supports for the birth parents of children in care. An aspect of that which we find important is supporting parents of children in care who have care experience themselves. When that pilot was being developed, we felt this was an issue that was not really being looked at in detail. EPIC did interviews with care leaver parents. We work with people up to the age of 26. Many of those young people are now parents themselves. Some of their children are in care. We feel that, over the course of the next five years of this pilot, that cohort really needs to be championed and to talk about their needs. They are a minority which is particularly vulnerable.

We are here today to discuss fostering issues. There is a crisis in fostering and in residential care. The wider issue is there is an inequality crisis, which is why we see children going into care. There will always be devastating cases of abuse and neglect. There will always be a need for a wonderful, thriving foster care system. Equally, there should be significant interventions in early years to try to make sure children and their families are better supported and protected. We have all seen in the past couple of weeks that there have been absolutely horrendous cases in the news of young people who were allegedly taken into care more than ten times whose lives have now ended. The Senator is right that this committee is here to talk about fostering today, but a much wider discussion about the care system is needed.

Going back to Ms O'Toole's original point, maybe it is time for Ireland to review the care system to include the significant progress that has been made on matters such as aftercare and fostering, which is still a robust system overall, but also to address the cracks that National Youth Council of Ireland members and other people are identifying and which Tusla itself has highlighted. We need to try to galvanise the wider political support and engagement that is necessary. Only 6,000 children are in care, but they are underrepresented. Public policy is rarely focused on their voices. Their voices are seldom heard in general in society. When we talk about building a care aware society, this is what we are talking about. I thank everybody for listening today.