Dr. Niall Muldoon:

I thank the Deputy. On the certainty and the sense of foreboding, it does clearly define the way some children would sense their lives. When we talk about transitory and unstable accommodation, we estimate between 30,000 to 35,000 are in that situation, between Ukrainian refugees, direct provision, homelessness and the Traveller situation. That is a lot of children in uncertainty and we know what certainty gives to children. It gives them security and stability. It is important we try to fix that.

On prevention, my background is psychology and I always use the term, and have used it with the Department of Education and other places, that self reflection should lead to self correction. We are not getting enough of that on a consistent basis. We get good people who do it and some people who do not. It is the same with schools, hospitals and local authorities. Some will do it but it is not a standard practice. Usually, if we find out there is a problem, we will try to fix it as quickly as possible and do not figure out anything after that. Let us move on instead to figuring it out and making sure it does not happen again. Prevention is something we try to move forward and I think they are starting to make changes. Certainly, the Department of Education has started to look at it in a different way and started to learn from things it has done before.

Last year, we proactively did a pilot in which, exactly as the Deputy said, we sent out three papers relating to children's rights. We sent simple, explanatory papers to three different Departments to see what their thoughts were and how they could use them, and we are hoping to do something more with that. We have linked in with the Department of children to do exactly the same thing. It is trying to do a one to one and a half hour training module on children's rights and putting children at the heart of decision-making within different Departments. It is to be hoped we are starting to move in that direction where people would be trained up to understand it and at least know where to find children's rights if they need to engage with the matter across their different Departments. That is hugely important because it has to be self-regulated and self-reflective. It cannot be waiting for us to come with a big-hitting investigation. We have done ten investigations and each one has taken a year and a half to two years. That is not the way to fix a system. A system needs to be self-correcting all the time.

On engagement with the Taoiseach, I have been promised I will have a meeting very soon and it is hoped it will be in the next month or so, if he is listening. I do meet consistently with most of the Ministers in our areas of education, children, health and justice.