Ms Lorna Kavanagh:

At the moment, we carry out what we call an eligibility assessment because there is no provision in law for us to undertake an age assessment. We carry out an eligibility for services assessment, which is what the young girl in Galway was waiting for. We have worked with that for the past four years. It has been problematic. There have been 13 judicial reviews on that work. We are working very closely with our colleagues in the IPO in relation to them developing this new age assessment process. Some of their staff have come to our training events. There has also been one case where the IPO had recently conducted an age assessment as part of a settlement of a judicial review.

There is a lot of joint working and we are looking at what it would eventually look like under the pact. Will it be that some of our people might be seconded over to assist in getting this process up and running because it is that multidisciplinary assessment? We are very open to assisting with it but the age assessment is not Tusla's work. We carry out this eligibility assessment and it is problematic.