Mr. Pat Smyth:

I will go through my opening statement briefly. I thank the committee for the invitation to attend today and provide an update on Tusla's ongoing engagement with Scouting Ireland. I am joined by my colleagues Mr. Jim Gibson, chief operations officer, Ms Linda Creamer, the service director for Dublin north east and national lead for Children First, and Mr. Brian Lee, director of quality assurance.

At the outset, I would like to acknowledge the important work done by Scouting Ireland, those involved in scouting locally across the country and in other organisations in the voluntary sector that provide valuable activities and outlets for children and young people. To give some background on Children First, the Children First Act 2015 was enacted in November 2015 and commenced in full in December 2017. The Act places a number of statutory obligations on specific groups of professionals and on particular organisations providing services to children. Through the provisions of the Act, it is intended to raise awareness of child abuse and neglect, provide for mandatory reporting by key professionals, improve child safeguarding arrangements in organisations providing services to children and provide for co-operation and information sharing between agencies when Tusla is undertaking child protection work.

The policy intent is that the Children First legislation will operate side by side with the existing non-statutory obligations provided for in the Children First national guidance for the protection and welfare of children. The Children First Act 2015 places specific obligations on organisations that provide services to children and young people. These include requirements to keep children safe from harm while they are using the service, to carry out a risk assessment to identify whether a child or young person could be harmed while availing of the service, to develop a child safeguarding statement that outlines the policies and procedures in place to manage the risks that have been identified and to appoint a relevant person to be the first point of contact in respect of the organisation’s child safeguarding statement.

I will give some detail on summary role of our child safeguarding statement compliance unit, CSSCU. The Children First Act 2015 requires organisations that are providers of relevant services to prepare a child safeguarding statement. A "relevant service" is any work or activity in an organisation or centre that results in a person or persons having access to or contact with children. This is a universal requirement and the list of relevant services is detailed in Schedule 1 to the Act. The CSSCU was established in March 2018 in Tusla to monitor, support and, where necessary, enforce compliance with this requirement. It is underpinned by sections 10 to 13, inclusive, of the Children First Act 2015. The unit only acts on the receipt of unsolicited information that a relevant service does not have a child safeguarding statement in place. The CSSCU has been engaged with Scouting Ireland since November 2018. This engagement culminated in the child safeguarding statement being deemed compliant in February 2018.

I now want to outline the role of our child protection services. This is pertinent to our discussions today. Tusla’s child protection and welfare teams have primary responsibility to promote the safety and well-being of children. In this respect, Tusla receives referrals in respect of children under 18 years of age and also referrals in respect of adults disclosing childhood abuse. In the context of the emergence of a significant number of retrospective allegations of abuse by adult complainants alleging they were abused by scout leaders as children, an analysis of current cases referred to Tusla by Scouting Ireland was undertaken.

This gave rise to concerns regarding the management of current cases of child protection referrals within Scouting Ireland. Tusla communicated with Scouting Ireland on 18 February regarding these concerns and in respect of the organisation’s policies, procedures and practice and overall compliance with Children First. This communication to the chief executive officer, CEO, of Scouting Ireland set out eight recommendations for Scouting Ireland. These were the recommendations published in the letter last week and read into the record of the Dáil by the Minister.

I will turn to subsequent communication with Scouting Ireland. This letter of 18 February 2019 was sent to the CEO of Scouting Ireland. It advised that Tusla was available to meet and discuss the issues raised. For clarity, the letter was not copied or issued to any person outside of Scouting Ireland or Tusla, certainly not by Tusla. On Wednesday, 27 February 2019, Tusla received a request from the Department of Children and Youth Affairs to provide a copy of the letter. The Department had received a direct communication from Scouting Ireland’s interim safeguarding manager in connection with this letter. At the request of the Department, Tusla provided the letter to the Department and the Minister. As stated, the recommendations were published on the Department's website and the Minister read those recommendations into the Dáil record.

For further clarification, Tusla did not have any direct contact from Scouting Ireland from the date of issue of the letter on 18 February 2019 until the chairperson of Scouting Ireland wrote to the chair of Tusla on 28 February. Subsequently, after a request was issued by us for a meeting, the CEO of Scouting Ireland and I had a discussion last Monday week and agreed to set up a meeting to be held last Thursday. Scouting Ireland and Tusla then met on Thursday, 7 March 2019, and agreed to address the issues raised in the letter of 18 February 2019 through an action plan. A copy of this action plan was sent to the committee last night. I do not know if the members of the committee have it, but I can summarise the actions at the end of this note. This work will be progressed over the coming weeks to put in place improvements to policy, procedure and practice and to provide assurance to Tusla in respect of the concerns raised.

It is worth noting the action plan. I am not sure if that document has gone to members.