Ms Saoirse Brady:

On the practical ways of standardising how the views of the child are heard, there is the guardian ad litemsystem, as noted by Dr. O'Mahony, and a national executive office will be set up in the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, which is a welcome development for public law proceedings.

We also feel this could be a way to extend it to private law proceedings, and that over time that should be looked at as a potential way to ensure equality between children and family law proceedings and those who are going through childcare. Sometimes there is a mix of both. We certainly brought this to the Department of Justice and Equality and it is in talks with the Department of Children and Youth Affairs about how this could potentially be done. I know it is a longer-term objective but it is really practical. We should not create inequalities between different children, depending on the type of court proceedings they come across.