Dr. Geoffrey Shannon:

Deputy Wallace raised some interesting questions. I will start with the last question. I share his view on State reliance on private providers. There is a heavy reliance on private providers. I am not making any criticisms of the private providers but child protection is the responsibility of the State. If there is a gap in our capacity to deliver on child protection, the gap needs to be filled by the State and not private providers. The fact is that children with emotional or behavioural problems sometimes need intervention on an emergency basis. What I found troubling is that on occasion such children have been refused the service because of their behaviour, which throws sand in the face of our commitment to treat all of the children of the nation equally. This is not a criticism of private providers and I found no evidence of wrongdoing on their part but, in terms of our reliance on private providers in this area, it is not desirable that the vast majority of cases my colleagues and I examined placed a heavy reliance on private providers. This comes back to having a child protection system that functions 24-7, 365 days a year. That is what we need.

I have confidence in Tusla. There are issues that Tusla needs to address and the Deputy has outlined them. I agree with his analysis of the out-of-hours service. There may be differences between myself and Tusla on what is our vision. However, my vision for an out-of-hours service is that every child in this country should have access to an out-of-hours service regardless of where he or she lives. Tusla has stated publicly that there is a full service in four counties. My view is that the service needs to be available throughout the country. Otherwise it becomes a geographical injustice in that the service one receives is dependent on the area in which one lives. I believe that this is not in keeping with the aspirations of the Irish people when they voted in a referendum to protect all our children and not just those in highly populated or more densely populated areas. I agree with the Deputy's analysis in that regard.

On the repeated removals, Deputy Ó Laoghaire has called for a full audit of the child protection system. I want to be careful in terms of drawing conclusions. This was a Garda audit. It involved me examining the section 12 powers. I do not want to overly extend myself in making conclusions. I have based the conclusions on the evidence available. However, I found a number of cases where children who had been subject to section 12 powers were returned to the family only to be subjected to section 12 again within a relatively short period of time. There could be a number of reasons for it. One could be whether the risk assessment was robust enough. Thinking of one case in particular, the garda who articulated this to me was very concerned that the child had been returned and wondered why it happened. It comes back to the issue raised by Deputy Jack Chambers around mystification. We need to ensure that members of An Garda Síochána understand why a child is being returned. That can be done on an anonymous basis. We need to learn from the experiences and the practices to see if things can be done more robustly.

On the PULSE system, I had a very positive experience with the unit with which I dealt. I am not saying this is representative. I need to be honest. The two people I dealt with were Detective Superintendent Daly and Inspector Michael Lynch, who are very good at producing the information. I do not know if that is representative. However, I found that the PULSE system is inadequate. There is no doubt. Whether that is replicated throughout the system or is symptomatic of broader problems with the PULSE system, what I found is that if I had relied on the PULSE data as a basis for this research I would have struggled to make conclusions and I wonder whether the conclusions I would have arrived at would have been accurate. I was able to cross-check the PULSE data against the other data I had collected and interrogate those PULSE data. What I found was that the PULSE system is not reliable. We need a system that is robust and it needs to be properly documented. I am not too concerned about what we call it but it needs to be there. As I said, a parent whose child has been taken into care needs to know why that happened. Parents have constitutional rights. If we intervene in family life and do not provide a justification for it, we risk being vulnerable to constitutional challenge for interfering unjustly in the right to respect for private and family life. That is why it is important, when I answered Deputy O'Callaghan's question, that we have a robust paper trail as to why the section 12 power was exercised.

In terms of my report, which was published at the end of May, I have not received any implementation plan. I am told that there is one. I presume that this committee will have an opportunity to deal with this issue in another form. I hope that is helpful.