Ms Lorna Kavanagh:

The child is a missing person. We do not have the mechanisms to look for them. For an Irish child in the care of Tusla who goes missing it is a very different situation because we would know that they normally hang around with a certain friend or they might go to their granny's or they might go to their aunty. In the case of separated children who do not have links in the community, and they frequently go missing shortly after arrival, there are no known places where they might turn up so it is very difficult to try to locate them. We immediately report them to An Garda Síochána. If there is any information we got at the intake stage that we can pass to An Garda Síochána or if we can follow up with social services in another country, we do that to try to locate them.