Ms Laura Dunleavy:

We welcome the invitation to speak today on behalf of Treoir’s Kinship Care Ireland programme. Founded in 2020 by kinship carer, Caitríona Nic Mhuiris, our mission is to promote the recognition, rights and entitlements of children, young people and families in kinship care. As we know, kinship care arises when children cannot live with their birth parents and are instead raised by relatives or close family friends. This care keeps children connected to their families and familiar network, and keeps children out of State care.

Approximately 10,000 to 12,000 children in Ireland are being raised in kinship care, many due to parental addiction. Kinship carers, often grandparents but also other relatives and family friends, provide vital stability for children. However, they face financial hardship, legal insecurity and limited access to supports, despite preventing many children from entering formal State care. If the 10,000 to 12,000 children in kinship care were to enter State residential care in the morning, it would cost the State more than €3.6 billion annually. If they were to access the lower rate of foster care allowance, it would cost the State €249 million. What is currently happening, by comparison, is that, in 2024, just 2,508 guardian payments were paid to an estimated one quarter of kinship families, equating to just €29 million. That rings true when compared to the statistics on our phoneline, where, in 2024, just 12% of our callers were in receipt of that vital support on their initial contact with us. Advocacy and support from Kinship Care Ireland and basic information brought that up to 32% but there are still a huge number without it. In the first half of this year, a percentage of 10% was brought up to 26% with advocacy.

Despite this vital role, informal kinship carers remain largely invisible in the official data. Private family arrangements are not fully captured by Tusla, and kinship care is not recorded in the CSO census, distorting our sense of the true scale. Between 2023 and the first half of 2025, Kinship Care Ireland’s phoneline data show that parental addiction was the leading pathway into kinship care, ranging from 40% to 50% of our callers in any given year, with 9% to 15% involving dual-parental addiction.

I am joined by Anna, who, if time allows, would like to answer any questions the members might have regarding her previously provided voice message about her lived experience and knowledge.

Another kinship carer we had intended to invite today has tragically lost her adult child since the time of this invitation in July. She continues to care for her grandchild while grieving. Without adequate supports, this responsibility deepens her burden, forcing her to hold the pain of loss and the demands of caregiving in the same breath. This reflects the hidden struggles of many kinship carers and highlights systemic failures in supporting families affected by substance misuse, failures that the Oireachtas has the opportunity to address.

Given my own social care experience, the reason I applied for this role was not from a love of public speaking, I can assure you, but because I grew disheartened and heartbroken after 11 years of attending the countless funerals of young adults, parents, children and babies whose lives were lost due to the impact of addiction. These deaths could have been prevented if our systems worked differently. They were the deaths of mothers, fathers, sons, daughters and young people who had potential and their entire lives ahead of them, if they had been given the opportunities, choices and supports similar to their peers in different catchment areas.

The Department of Children, Disability and Equality has begun vital work to support kinship families and address policy gaps, but the Department cannot do this work alone. Kinship care needs to span across Departments in the areas of health, housing, education, welfare and justice. To truly protect children in kinship care, we need a whole-of-government response. Treoir’s Kinship Care Ireland programme calls on the committee to demand cross-departmental responses to support kinship families. This includes providing a kinship care allowance equal to foster parents and guaranteeing child and welfare supports without unfair means testing. It means removing the criterion that people must evidence parental abandonment to access this basis payment, which is not in line with parental rights or a child’s right to a relationship with their parent. It is in contrast to the criteria for the foster care allowance, where children are, rightly, supported to sustain that parental relationship.

Families need secure housing and legal recognition through special guardianship orders with faster, low-cost processes. Children and carers must have access to mental health, therapeutic, educational and healthcare supports. Aftercare should be extended for young people with kinship care experience, and kinship carers should receive training, respite, counselling and social care, when needed, as well as access to in-person peer supports. Finally, integrated family recovery pathways, linking addiction and child and family supports, must be developed alongside stronger national data collection on kinship care.

In conclusion, kinship carers are a critical yet under-supported pillar of Ireland’s response to addiction-related family breakdown. By formally recognising and resourcing kinship families, the Oireachtas can reduce reliance on formal State care, support recovery and family resilience, safeguard the well-being of children and address intergenerational cycles of trauma and addiction. Kinship families are relied upon to break cycles of addiction. They cannot do it alone, nor should they have to.

I will now take a few moments to outline comments from carers regarding the impact of a lack of guardianship. Kinship carers are entrusted with the child's full-time caring role, but are often not supported with the legal status to fulfil this caring responsibility without challenges. One carer said:

I am stuck in the middle with this medical consent issue and about to be closed off to Tusla. She needs counselling.

Another said:

The baby was born with a heart condition. Not only was I terrified about that when she came to me, but also terrified that if I needed to bring her to the hospital in the middle of the night, they might not allow me in without a parent present, which I couldn’t guarantee. I was holding my breath for a year.

Another said:

I was terrified to apply for any sort of financial support until I had waited the year to apply for guardianship. I could not change over the child benefit. What if it caused conflict and the child was taken away from me and back to the situation?

The emotional toll of navigating addiction, and balancing love and worry for their adult child with the need to protect their grandchild, is profound.

At times, they must manage situations of extremely challenging behaviour from parents or face the fear of death threats relating to drug intimidation and violence. Kinship-----