Mr. David French:

We had meetings in the Department of Justice. The victims' families showed up every month between July and January to deal with the 2023 report. One of the things that came out of that was a multi-agency critical planning and response, MACPAR, team, which is a specialist team that shows up and helps the victim's family post homicide, and signposts the resources, what is going to happen next and so on. Expertise is super important, as is prior experience. As the Senator said, a standard social worker will not necessarily have that experience.

The Barnahus example was pointed out. The key insight is that killing a parent is child abuse. If you are a parent and you kill the other parent, that is child abuse. In the post-abuse situations, the child is a direct victim. That is increasingly recognised. If there is a domestic homicide or even severe domestic abuse, the child is a direct victim. That child is being abused. In a normal situation where a parent is missing, you can assume the good intentions of the other parent. The standard social worker will assume everyone wants the best for the child. Clearly, if you have already abused a child directly or by killing their other parent, you do not want the best for the child. A set of expertise could recognise that and go forward sensibly.

Barnahus was not involved in our situation. The murder was in Castlebar and Barnahus is in Galway. Some kind of specialist unit is needed but I would not want to get away from the fact Tusla should not necessarily be the only way this can happen. Barnahus or something like that in Tusla could be consulted for expertise but it does not really make their life any better if they have to do a secretarial, administrative job by taking a verdict from here and going into the family law court. Clearly, the family law court should reach out to them to get an expert opinion later on. Trotting down to kick the process off over there is not really something you need someone of their calibre to do.