Mr. Gerry Hone:

I thank the Senator for her question. We are under pressure in terms of placements - she is right - and that does lead to delays in placing children appropriately. Often, we have to place children further away from their families and community of origin, mainly due to the demand on the agency at the moment. We have provided more than 800 placements for separated children in recent years - maybe even in the last year. There is huge demand. The providers are the same ones that provide placements across the board. That creates a type of pressure cooker in terms of what is available.

We are working very hard to increase our own internal capacity regarding residential care, as Ms Duggan outlined. I attend lots of estates meetings at the moment, where we are looking at properties, buying them, trying to get them staffed and opened quickly. It takes, on average, approximately two years to buy a property and get it up to speed in terms of fire regulations and health and safety issues that have to be done before it can be opened and staffed. That creates further delays in the system in terms of our ability, but we are working hard in those spaces to get that done.

Our priority is safe care for children. Whether that is an acute case or an early intervention case, safety is the key. We have to assess safety all the time. All of our systems are geared toward assessing safety and ensuring safe care for young people, including our assessment process and the training of our staff. All of our staff are trained very well under Children First in order that we can recognise where children are at risk of significant harm and need something else, while prioritising the support of families to keep children at home. We should prioritise that at all times. It should be a last resort to remove children.