Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I apologise, I was trying to do two committees at once as well so I missed some information in my travels.

I do not know if it was mentioned but one of the parts of independent advocacy that the committee would do well to underline in the context of the general scheme is the need for independent advocacy to support parents. We tried to get some witnesses from that area. Unfortunately, they could not make it here today. There are things happening at that stage. However, my experience of dealing with and supporting care leaver parents whose children are being taken into care is that quite often the only support they get would be from EPIC. That is in their role as a care leaver, not as a parent facing the system. The benefits of independent advocacy can be seen clearly in that context.

On advocacy, EPIC supports children in care. We have been talking about the voluntary care agreements. I will get to those presently. Much of the time, there are private family arrangements in place. I raised this matter with Tusla last week. Quite often, private family arrangements are used as a substitute for formal care agreements. We are often left with a family who should be a foster family not getting the necessary supports or a child who should be in care not getting support. Those situations are not addressed in the general scheme. That is partly because the people to whom I refer are in that grey area outside the law. In the context of their advocacy role, are the witnesses able to get to these people or do they not know where they are?

The witnesses mentioned aftercare. Tusla also sought an expansion in that regard at last week's meeting. There is nothing here in the reforms in the context of aftercare or special care. This is an opportunity to look at those aspects. When I raised them at last week's meeting, the Department said that aftercare had just been reformed and that there was no need to reform it again. That is a short and perhaps ungenerous summary, but that is basically what the officials said. It would be very useful to hear the witnesses' experience of this matter.

My next question is for the representatives from the IFCA. There is nothing in here around the foster care committees. These are part of the regulations and will continue to be able to make regulations. This strikes me as an opportunity to put them on to a slightly more statutory footing because I have experienced a bit of inconsistency around them. Do foster care committees need reform or improvement? Could that be achieved by the insertion of a new head into the general scheme to deal specifically with these committees?