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

I thank Ms Gallagher for appearing before us and for the work she will no doubt do. I will start by outing my lack of knowledge of the exact parameters of her role. The State is failing when it comes to human trafficking in general.

There is a specific subset there within child trafficking, which I will come to in a second, but we are failing completely in terms of human trafficking in this country. The trafficking in persons, TIP, report, and all that says about us, is very clear. Ms Gallagher mentioned the gaps in the structures and the overreliance on the security and police structures. In 2015, in the case of P v.Chief Superintendent Garda National Immigration Bureau & Ors., Ms Justice O'Malley essentially tore apart the system as denying the basic rights of victims. Nothing has changed since then. We now have a proposal for the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Human Trafficking) Bill 2023. The justice committee has published its pre-legislative report. We have specifically pointed to the lack of a specific identification process for child victims. One of my questions concerns the special rapporteur's role and ability to engage with the justice committee or the Minister for Justice on this important legislation. It is only on First Stage. It has not even gone anywhere. We have completed pre-legislative scrutiny and that is about it. We must seek to ensure that the special rapporteur's expertise and focus on child rights can be brought to bear on that Bill.

On the CAMHS issue, one of my frustrations was touched on briefly by Deputy Murnane O'Connor. One of the things that I found frustrating as a social worker, which was not fully explored as it should have been in the Finnerty report, was the refusal to accept referrals. We talk about about how poor CAMHS is in terms of its IT system and how it is not helping patients with their mental health who are referred into it, but behind them is a whole cohort who are just simply refused access. They are told that the issue is behavioural or it is not for CAMHS and is for community services that do not exist. There is a whole cohort of young people who, through gatekeeping, are kept out of CAMHS, and who I feel are quite invisible when we discuss the failings of CAMHS and need to be considered. Again, in terms of the information gap, I do not believe they are really being measured.

In her opening statement, Ms Gallagher mentioned outstanding matters to be resolved relating to the Child Care (Amendment) Act 2022. I ask her to give us a brief précis of those outstanding measures and, if there is time, to address the issue of unaccompanied minors and separated children, the unique challenges facing Ireland in relation to them and how best Ireland can respond to those challenges.