Ms Lorna Kavanagh:

We undertook extensive consultation on it and drew largely on the European Asylum Support Office, EASO, guidelines on conducting age assessments. It is important to say that the provision in legislation for conducting age assessment is not actually with Tusla but under the International Protection Act. When a child is referred to us under section 13, where we believe the young person to be a minor, we look at eligibility and what standard of care or care placement the young person needs. We drew heavily on the EASO guidelines and consulted the NGOs in the sector. It also went through robust legal processes with the council. We have arrived at a position which is much better than where we were before, where assessments were conducted based on what was obviously apparent. We were saying that people appeared to be adults and so they were not accepted into our service. That obviously is not happening any more. It is much more comprehensive but it is absolutely not straightforward.

One has to consider everything in the round. Some people have straightforward accounts of their experience. Other young people are traumatised and are not able to communicate what their experience has been. We have also come across situations where young people present and are extremely vulnerable but they are not necessarily minors. Sometimes there is paperwork that the International Protection Office has access to if the young people have been in other member states, such as Sweden or elsewhere, where age assessments and medical assessments have been undertaken. We seek that information. Immigration services also have information on visa applications. Sometimes that can determine that young people are not minors. We have a number of young people in our care who we believe are adults but we have given them the benefit of the doubt. They present saying they are 15. A year or two passes and we think they are older than that, but we have a duty of care to see that through, which we are doing at the moment. We have to be careful about our safeguarding responsibilities towards other children.

The benefit of the doubt is not a point or decision-making piece. We are training our staff to understand that they must apply the benefit of the doubt from the outset. Young people are referred as children and, from the outset, are to be treated as children, unless something suggests to us that they are not children. Either way, the benefit of the doubt is applied throughout the process. A number of young people have been re-referred with additional paperwork which they got from home or elsewhere. When they present to us with that paperwork, we reassess them. There are times, when conducting those assessments, that there is significant pressure on the system. We have taken a number of young people into care on the benefit of the doubt, where we initially believed they were not minors and then they came with additional information or supporting documentation that would suggest that they were.

We cannot validate documentation in Tusla. We rely on our colleagues in the IPO to validate documentation. If Afghan young people present with tazkiras, the IPO may say it accepts them as identification, but if it cannot validate them as authentic identification, that can create problems for us. Often, the nature of the circumstances of the young people is such that they may not have original documentation and could have copies or photocopies of it. It is quite complex. There are certainly much fairer procedures and due process in our new procedure than there were previously. That is just to provide that assurance.