Ms Mary Henderson:

I was just going to make some comments on the child-specific procedure. As Dr. Yonkova pointed out, the first consideration needs to be the best interests of the child. They need to be addressed. It is clearly provided for in the directive as to how that ought to be done. As assessment has to be made that a person is, in fact, a child. Until they are determined conclusively not to be, they ought to be treated as a child. Second, we would ensure that any assessment is done in an appropriate manner. The Immigrant Council of Ireland made submissions to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child which we can provide to the joint committee to set out a specific age assessment procedure that ought to be adopted. I agree that a guardian ought to be appointed and not a guardian ad litem. It is not necessarily in respect of court proceedings that a child victim of trafficking is going to be interacting with the State. They will be interacting with a number of different agencies to access their entitlements to services. They may not be participating in a court process. One of the aspects of the heads of the Bill that we welcome is that co-operation is not a requirement in order to access services and be recognised as a victim.

We would also draw attention to the fact that we are fully aware of where systems have failed in the past for appropriate persons to be appointed to represent the interests of child victims of trafficking where children have not been identified as children and as a result have not had access to child-appropriate mechanisms. There are imbalances in service provision of childcare services throughout the country. I do not think they should all be referred to the unaccompanied minors unit, not least because that unit is already very burdened but also because not all child victims of trafficking are going to be seeking asylum.

Equally they are not all going to be migrants. They could also be Irish citizens. They may need access to a range of different processes that are not necessarily migrant-specific. We really have to move away from victims of trafficking only being considered as migrants or non-EUA migrants. There are European migrants and Irish citizens who are victims of trafficking also.

On the person who is appointed to represent the interests of the child, we emphasise that they need to be appropriately resourced, that is, not to use systems that are already extremely stretched to plug gaps but actually to develop a system in line with best practice that ensures the service is victim centred, child specific and child friendly. On head 16, nobody has looked at the data-sharing provisions within the operation of the committee. We draw attention to the GDPR and the requirements of the law enforcement directive as guidance on how information has to be shared between competent authorities and then how trusted partners would only share with the consent of an applicant. This is something we support. It is vague in how it is drafted at the moment and difficult to comment on how it will actually operate. Finally, I emphasise that any person of any nationality or any migration status, be it undocumented, an asylum seeker or somebody else who has another entitlement to reside in the State ought to be able to access this national referral mechanism, NRM, in order that they can be properly identified as a victim of trafficking or of crime with additional problems.