Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 25 April 2023

Joint Committee On Children, Equality, Disability, Integration And Youth

Possible Enhancement of Child Protection Powers of Tusla: Discussion

Mr. Ger Brophy:

I might join that to our proactive duty. In this space, we are being extremely proactive by introducing the Barnahus model in Ireland. We have three centres which are in the west, east and south. Key to all of that is the partnership between the HSE's medical forensic service, ourselves in terms of child protection and An Garda Síochána, and Children's Health Ireland, CHI, in the east. Specialist interviewing is really important in the midst of that. We have 12 people training in this country but we need more people. The Garda recognises that it has a challenge around this as well. There is joint training going on at the moment. Again, 12 people have gone through the most recent batch of training this year. We hope that they will qualify as joint specialist interviewers. That would mean we will have the ongoing training and support, which is required, later this year. We are actively looking to get more people trained, for the rest of this year and into next year. There is quite a big programme. Recruitment and retention is challenging but we are actively working on that.

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