Sandra McLellan (Cork East, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the witnesses for their informative presentation. I would like to make a few observations and ask some questions. Dr. Muldoon said that the Ombudsman for Children's Office "is ten years old this year and... has received more than 10,000 complaints from children" in that time. Is the level of complaints increasing? The average annual number of complaints over the last decade is approximately 1,000. What is the annual figure at present? Is it closer to 1,500 or 500? How quickly are these complaints dealt with? Dr. Muldoon suggested that the Children First report highlighted "poor inter-agency co-operation between the Garda and the HSE". Was that common right across the board or was it the exception? How has that improved? How can we further improve it? He also said that the HSE "went on to implement all of the recommendations" of the report on social work service provision in North Lee. How was this achieved? What impact has this had? The issues of poor record-keeping and interagency co-operation were highlighted in the meta-analysis. In one case, a child was moved 11 times to different placements. In another case, a child was forced to stay longer than necessary in a justice facility. Can Dr. Muldoon give us the name of the facility in question? Does this still happen? What are the effects that this can have on a child? I note that Children First was not implemented in a particular HSE region until late 2012. I want to know why this was allowed to happen. Has this been rectified?