Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party)
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I thank the Chair and welcome and thank our guests. I have nothing but positive things to say about Barnahus. It is an excellent, much-needed and long-overdue service. It is an excellent service development. The DPSUs have been an excellent service development as well. I am really excited about being able to role this out.

That said, when I look at how the Barnahus or the children's advocacy centre in America that Barnahus is based on is rolled out, there is a huge difference in the catchment areas, the numbers of centres and the number of centres they cover. Norway, which has a similar population to ours, has 11 Barnahus centres or one centre per 500,000 people. Sweden has 34 or one per 300,000 people. In America, there are approximately 900 children's advocacy centres or one per 380,000 people. Cyprus has a population of 1.2 million. It also has three Barnahus centres or one per 402,000 people. We have one per 1.6 million. To get that same kind of coverage, we would need anywhere from, say, ten to 15. Even if one is looking at ten, one would be expanding it to Waterford, Kilkenny, Drogheda, Sligo, Limerick and numerous other places, and taking what is an excellent service and making it much more widely available. If I have any concern or complaint, it is that we are not doing this big enough. I did not hear or see anything in the notes about that expansion. Is there a plan to expand it? I am looking here at the Department. Given how successful and how important this model is, we should be looking to expand it to the levels that other countries are using it at.

My next question relates to Dublin, which Barnahus east will cover. Currently, we have St. Clare's and St. Louise's. Will it just be one centre or will it be Barnahus East based across the two of these? What will that development in the future look like and will this entail a reduction in service provision in Dublin? Understandably, these are two national agencies essentially and some service reduction is understandable if there are others opening up, but I ask them to speak to that because it is, for me, about those gaps that we are leaving there.

Another issue I talk about a lot in this area, which would be a way of trying to fill the gaps and hopefully be a step to developing Barnahus in other areas, is a colocation of duty social workers in the district protective services unit. I have said this on a couple of occasions, both at the committee and in the Chamber. We talk about how the importance of the Barnahus is that the coworking or multiagency working comes organically from people being in the same building. We had a recent Policing Authority presentation on the oversight of the policing response to child sexual abuse and it highlighted that interagency working is a key area where continuing challenges present. We have these excellent services in the DPSUs and we have quality social workers in Tusla - not enough of them but the ones that are there are good.

Why are we not colocating even one day a week to build up the organic connections the witnesses have said are important and arise naturally? I will leave it there. I have a few questions on specialist interviewing, the joint interviewing protocol between Tusla and An Garda Síochána and how that works but I will come back to them in the second round. It is also part of filling the gaps.