Mr. Gerard Brophy:

Those two approvals are for general foster care. If a child comes in looking for foster care, these are generally approved, they can take any child and there will be specific age groups. Both generally and in respect of the Traveller community, we look for kinship care if we can. If we have a child who needs to come into care, we will look to the uncles, aunts and other members of the extended family such as grandparents. A lot more children are accommodated through that possibly but, again, we do not have data on it. This is something we need to do and we will do it over the next five years because those foster carers will be on our TCM system. We are just at the point where the foster care is on TCM. We have had child protection and welfare on it for a while foster care has come on to it in the past year. We are in a better position where we will be able to plan for the future.

The Senator is right. Part of the difficulty is Garda vetting. Garda vetting is really important for anyone who is caring for a child and who is not a mother or father. Sometimes members of the Traveller community can be reluctant to get involved in that process but, again, we work with that the same as we do with the rest of the community and that works out but it is an added difficulty.