Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 3 November 2020
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Children and Youth Affairs
Sustainable Development Goals and Departmental Priorities: Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth
Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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I cannot see if the Chairman is still wearing her fostering badge but I know she was wearing it earlier. Fostering awareness week is coming up and my Department is doing one or two discrete campaigns. As well as the wider fostering campaign, we are also looking to target fostering parents within the Travelling community. We are also looking at a programme to encourage foster parents for unaccompanied minors such as those coming from Greece as a specific new category of foster parents, and provide the relevant supports. I take on board the Deputy's point on the importance of supporting the Tusla foster parents.
On the issue of the exhumations, the idea is that we create legislation that allows for the creation of an agency for a defined period of time, which would undertake the excavations, exhumations, identification and reburial for a specific site. Initially, it will be Tuam. However, if a range of determined factors were met in another site, the same legislation could be used to create a new agency, also established for a specific period of time, to undertake similar work on another site. We will not need to legislate again as this legislation will address any subsequent need, beyond Tuam, to undertake this sort of work.