Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 2 July 2024
Joint Committee On Children, Equality, Disability, Integration And Youth
Omudsman for Children Annual Report 2023: Ombudsman for Children
3:00 pm
Dr. Niall Muldoon:
On that, we have not chatted to the Child and Family Agency. We have chatted to the Department of children. It was unsure as to whether it needed us to come on board or not, but we are certainly engaging with it now. We did a review of our Act and this was one of the lacunae we found in that. We have been engaging with it in the last couple of weeks to move that forward. As the Deputy will understand, we are not looking for a big Bill to create all the changes we want. Sometimes you just look to be opportunistic. If there is a Bill coming through you might be able to do something with it. This one was never offered to us an opportunity, but we are engaging with the Department to try to make it happen. As the Deputy will understand, the reason we were not involved in it was the history of crèches is that they were always private, so it was not relevant to us. It was not a publicly-provided service, but it has now turned around. I am not sure what the percentage is, but there is over €2 billion going into it now, so from our point of view it makes sense we have some sort of engagement with that. As to how that looks, it may or may not be complaint-handling but we want to engage around it.