Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank everyone for their contributions. We had the Ombudsman for Children's Office before us last week, and we have the HSE and Tusla in this week. The issue that I kept on thinking about was the role of public representatives when it comes to, as I have experienced, making complaints regarding abuse and different things going on in a house. I recall making a complaint to the HSE over a particular incident. I am curious as to what the process for public representatives is. If someone complains to me that they think there is abuse or something going on in a house that is detrimental to a child, that the child is getting beaten, that there are mental health issues and all of this going on, what should we do as public representatives? I am curious to hear the witnesses' thoughts on that.

We talk about the voice of the child, about the child being at the front, and the rights of the child. What happens in cases where children are in residential care, they keep running away and they have no parents as such? They just have, say, relatives or people they keeps running to, and there is a problem with that. What are their rights in addressing that? With Tusla, is there legal advice? Are they entitled to legal representation? I would like to know how that is addressed. It appears, in a case that I am aware of, that the child has no rights. The child is totally distressed and does not know what to do, and is getting more distressed because of being refused contact with someone. There are reasons, and I am not going to go into that. However, I am just curious about the approach on that.

I also want to ask the HSE to discuss whether a national set of standards should be implemented for individuals with autism and who have dual diagnosis. I think this has been mentioned previously. I want to know where we are with that. Is it being addressed? Are we anywhere near doing that?

Regarding complaints, I was thinking about the CDNTs. I know there are problems in filling out those teams. Is Tusla anywhere near that? I know there are different areas, and we have so many of them. Are the teams being filled, and how many of them are there across the country? There was a figure mentioned before but that is obviously a big drawback in addressing a lot of the issues. Maybe someone could explain that to us.