Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I want to return to the issue of unaccompanied minors, which I asked about in my first set of questions. I am really looking for Tusla's response to the submission of the Office of the Ombudsman for Children. It referred to prohibiting the placement of children in unregulated accommodation and establishing a statutory duty on Tusla to ensure there are sufficient appropriate placements within each administrative area, including for children in need of emergency accommodation. Given the situation with Ukraine and international protection, we now have circumstances in this country in which people like me are fielding calls from people about whether children are being protected properly in certain centres providing accommodation and whether there is a robust, formal inspection regime. I have referred these concerns to Tusla and, to be fair to it, interventions have been made.

With respect to the point made by the OCO, however, we are talking about two different things here. I will take up the point about the protection of unaccompanied minors and unregulated accommodation. The two key words for me are "unregulated" and "accommodation". There is a challenge for Tusla to pick up where the accommodation is in the first instance, because things are moving rapidly. There is a need to get an understanding of where Tusla sits in respect of the regulation of accommodation that is being provided and identify how we bolt onto this proposed legislation a mechanism to ensure that we pick up unaccompanied minors and-or any child who is in unregulated accommodation. I want to leave the room with a better understanding of where Tusla stands in that regard.

On the early years sector, this is not to be critical but I wanted to drill down into parts of the Department’s submission, such as the formal information sharing with parents in relation to the review of part 7(a) of the Act, the introduction of a fit person regulation, namely, the regulation to empower Tusla “to assess the suitability of a person to become a registered provider”. How will that operate? I am a constituency Deputy. We deal with the gamut of humanity and the early-years sector is part of what we deal with. Parents come to us with complaints about individual providers and we refer them to Tusla, the Child and Family Agency but once it is gone one trusts that the inspectorate regime does its work. Very often, parents tell me that they are left somewhat in the dark on a legitimate complaint they might have made against a provider in respect of the care of their child, for instance. Will this proposed legislation tighten that up? If so, how will it do that so that the parent has some transparency on what is happening in respect of a complaint that they might have made about the care of their child?