Ms Tanya Ward:

When children go missing, a missing person alert goes out. Tusla records a child as going missing if it has been more than 15 minutes. The majority of children who go missing in the care system appear very quickly. A missing child alert does go out to the Garda and we often see it on social media. We see the stakeholders putting out a missing child alert in the hope of seeing the child located. The bigger issue is with children whom Tusla is unable to identify. The real focus needs to be on prevention. When migrant or refugee children go missing, the reason can be that they have arrived on our island because it is a way in and they are trying to unify with a family member, perhaps in the UK. This often happens. Tusla and the Garda try to locate the family member and sometimes there is contact. It is very hard if Tusla is unable to get a social worker in the UK to go directly to verify that the child is with a family member.