Ms Marissa Ryan:

EPIC works most generally in our advocacy service with the children and young people who are in residential care. My two youth council members who are here came through the foster system and are here by virtue of that fact, but we work with many children and young people who, as Ms O'Toole alluded to, are in Oberstown, in private residential care or in high-support or special care. A concern we have about the use of the private residential care provision model is around regulation and inspections. As things stand, if there is a public home run by Tusla, it is inspected by HIQA. Thus we have the oversight there and it is the appropriate way independently to inspect places where children live. However, the private residential care sector is not independently inspected by HIQA. Tusla must commission the service and must then inspect it itself, so there is a lack of independent oversight of those homes. We know from the evidence of other jurisdictions, particularly within the UK, that where there is not independent oversight and regular inspections and so on, it is very easy for child protection breaches to happen. That is an issue of significant concern to us in EPIC. Alongside the increased privatisation of children's homes we also have issues with the lack of oversight and inspection of them.

The second issue I wish to highlight briefly is the fact that while there is a crisis in the number of foster carers, there is also an absence of appropriate numbers of residential care placements. We are seeing that many of the children and young people we work with are increasingly without places to go and they are being moved around very regularly because there are not enough foster placements, but there also are not enough residential care placements. That is when you see reported in the media, as I am sure members have, the number of children, even quite young ones, being accommodated in hotel, bed and breakfast and emergency accommodation. Likewise, at the older end of the scale we are working with teenagers who are increasingly in precarious circumstances and lapsing into homelessness. Those are two more issues to add to the committee's plate.