Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their presentations. Never before did we feel such weight as Oireachtas committee members as this morning in respect of the revelations of the past month. The Bill is very welcome. Along with other members, I have been looking for it to come before us for some time. However long it takes us to get it right, we now need to do so - to get this Bill right in its entirety. We need to future-proof it so as not to continue making the mistakes of the past. We will be doing this blind to some extent, without any commission reports or anything. We all need to take a collaborative approach.

I was very much taken aback by the witnesses' presentations. They were fantastic. I know there are 6,344 children in care at this moment. To think that only 1,500 of them have access to a guardian ad litemservice, and that at the discretion of a judge, is shocking. The most important thing that needs to be enshrined in the legislation, with the will of everybody, is the right of the child to be represented, and not just on a discretionary basis. Both witnesses touched on that this morning. Deputy O'Sullivan has also addressed it. We need to strengthen the Bill in respect of that issue.

Considering the balances, checks and controls and the overarching body that needs to be put in place, I am concerned that we would be creating another structure. Will we be able to monitor it? I have a concern around creating another entity, when it may be the case that another body cannot manage it. I have a concern about taking the role away from Tusla because Tusla was set up to protect the child. That was the whole reason it was taken out of the HSE and the reason we have Tusla there.

I think Tusla is still a department in infancy which we need to grow because it has never been given the opportunity to do that as it has not had enough staffing or funding. Coming back to collaboration, it all has to work together. There is a role for Tusla to play here and I am not in favour of leaving it out completely. I would like to hear what the controls, balances and staffing of the overarching body would be.

What has worried me from the various press articles over the past fortnight is that one person who acts as a guardian ad litemservice is getting €300,000 for providing that service. I do not know what controls or checks and balances exist for approving those sorts of services. That is what I want to see happen. If we go back to the Grace case, we see that someone was given an opportunity to provide respite which turned into full-blown fostering and there is no documentation. We need to get the balances and checks from its inception and write that in as part of the Bill. How do the witnesses foresee this working and how would it work with the agency that is in place?