Dr. Niall Muldoon:

Within the Covid situation - and again I look forward to when there is a review of the process around that - it is clear at the particular time the Government was coming together to make really important decisions, it brought lots of people into the room and there was lots of influence from outside. There was influence on tax, on business and on lots of areas, but children were not in that room. The closest we got to children being represented in that decision-making situation was paediatricians or someone like that. Children's rights were not represented.

Individual Departments are now starting to bring children's views into play much more often. The Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth is doing a phenomenal job. The Department of Education is starting to set up, for the first time ever, a children's panel. Again, is it not ironic the one Department that has the most impact on children is only starting to listen children now? Nevertheless, it is a step forward and we will take it. There are thus many gaps, but we need to get to a situation where every Department asks itself when it makes a decision how it is going to impact on children. That is why we have consistently pushed for the incorporation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into our legislation so no Department can ignore children's rights in that way.