Dr. Niall Muldoon:

I thank the Chair for her kind words. I really appreciate them. I thank the committee for inviting us to discuss Tomorrow Starts with Us, our annual report for 2024. I am joined today by director of investigations, Ms Nuala Ward and head of policy, Dr. Tricia Keilthy.

The Ombudsman for Children’s office is an independent statutory body with two main duties, namely, to deal with complaints made by, or on behalf of, children about the actions of public organisations, and to promote the rights and welfare of children under 18 living in Ireland. Last year we celebrated our 20th anniversary. The office was established in 2004 by the Ombudsman for Children Act 2002 and our annual report for 2024 reflects this milestone year for our office.

We believe anniversaries like these are important, because as well as providing us with an opportunity to pause and reflect on what’s come before, they provide a fresh impetus to focus on the future. This is highlighted for us through our 20th anniversary theme of Tomorrow Starts with Us, which was decided upon with the help of our brilliant youth advisory panel and reminds us of our raison d’être in working towards a better tomorrow for all children in Ireland.

In 2024, the office continued to receive a high volume of complaints about children’s public services, with a total of 1,772 contacts about complaints made to our office last year. The complaints we receive are becoming more complex, with almost one in five relating to more than one agency, and a third relating to multiple categories of concern. As in previous years, education remains the most complained about issue to our office, with 33% of all complaints relating to education. This is followed by Tusla at 19% and complaints about children’s health services at 15%.

Throughout 2024, we engaged with almost 2,500 children through our rights education workshops and school visits around the country. Some 63% of these schools were DEIS schools, a 14% increase on 2023, and nearly two thirds of the schools that travelled to our office came from outside Dublin. Last year we also delivered workshops directly through the Irish language to three gaelscoileanna and continued important outreach work in direct provision and accommodation centres, Oberstown Children’s Detention Campus, CAMHS inpatient units and community and voluntary centres throughout the country.

We marked our 20th anniversary last year with a number of events and publications. This included two wonderful children’s parties at the Swan Youth Service, St. Agatha’s Hall in Dublin’s north-east inner city and at the Mayfield Sports Centre in Cork city. We also joined up with Mary Immaculate College, Thurles for a three-day summer school celebrating youth voices in education and carried out a survey of over 1,000 secondary school children on the issues facing them today and the Ireland they would like to see in the future. We found that the same issues at the forefront of public discourse are some of those same issues that worry our young people such as the cost of living, future housing needs and access to mental health services, yet these are not necessarily treated as children’s issues at decision-making tables.

Our annual report for 2024 also highlights our concern that children seeking international protection are still living in insecure and unregulated settings and that, despite long-standing recommendations, HIQA still does not have remit to inspect emergency accommodation centres. We also feature case studies that demonstrate some of the complaints and subsequent issues dealt with by our office. These include the case of six-year-old Enda, an anonymised name, whose mother contacted us when he was locked in a room at school due to his disruptive behaviour. Enda’s story highlights the importance of strong guidelines around behaviours of concern at school, which our office has engaged with the Department of education on throughout the year. We also outline how we managed to get a change to the eligibility criteria in the application form for the long-term illness scheme for children with ADHD. That has made a huge difference for families who contacted us when they were told they were not eligible.

What is striking for us is that 20 years since the Office of the Ombudsman for Children was established, many of the same issues for children are still coming up today. In 2004, 177 complaints were received and approximately 17% related to access to services for children with disabilities. That is still an issue. This shows us that while there has undoubtedly been progress for children on many fronts, the consistency of the issues raised 20 years apart reinforces the need to properly place children’s rights, all of them, at the fore of policy decisions and service provision. That is why our office is committed to driving our campaign for the full and direct incorporation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, UNCRC, into domestic law.

Incorporation is the most important thing we can do to protect and safeguard the rights of all children in Ireland. Every issue we highlight in our annual report before the committee today leads us back to the need to give real force to the international obligations we have already signed up to. This is nothing new; we have already committed to these rights. It will put children and their rights at the heart of every decision within the public service and Civil Service and gives us a stronger basis to ensure we are keeping our promises to children. For example, if five years ago the State had to come up with a child and family-focused homeless strategy, would there still be 4,775 children in emergency accommodation today? If our recommendations around scoliosis as a children’s rights issue as far back as 2017 were made against a backdrop of direct incorporation, would there be the same crisis as there is today?

As Ombudsman for Children I am exasperated and utterly dismayed at the persistent chronic issues around access to affordable housing for children and families, and at the unacceptable delays in access to vital surgeries and assessment of need. In a country as well-off as Ireland economically, we must surely be able to better funnel our resources into where they are needed most. If a society is judged on how we treat our most vulnerable, what does our record on these issues say about us?

I have previously said that we are now at a crossroads in what can be achieved for children and in the current climate of uncertainty and change, it is more important than ever for the State to bed down its commitment on children’s rights. Therefore our office will continue to push for the rights of children to be the signpost that is followed at all times. By doing that we can bring to life the Government’s promise to make Ireland the best place in Europe for children to grow up.

I will now outline a list of priorities to steer the committee. The incorporation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is a priority. There should be an exploration of the resources Tusla has to fulfil its mandate across all issues for which it has responsibility, including children in care and child protection. As I mentioned earlier, the three issues that children want us to look at are mental health, housing, cost of living and poverty, which go together as one. Those are the issues I would love the committee to be looking at. I thank members for their time today and we look forward to any questions.