Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 12 June 2025
Committee on Children and Equality
Priority Issues Facing the Department: Minister for Children, Disability and Equality
2:00 am
Aisling Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister and her officials for being here today and for their engagement with the committee to date. I thank her for her briefing last week and her personal engagement with me on questions and issues I have raised.
I was delighted foster care was the first issue she mentioned in her opening statement. It is a topic I am very interested in and that is very close to my heart. I have a close relative who came to our family through adoption, having first been in the foster care system. It was amazing to see at first hand what joining the family did for my niece. Most foster carers do not do it for the money. It is not a career but we should see it as a career. It is a labour of love but we should see it as labour foster carers are doing for us and for families. Senator Kennelly and Deputy Kerrane, especially, made the case eloquently for supports for foster carers. Counselling is a massive factor. In my family situation, my relatives took in a very small baby for seven months and, in effect, raised her as their own. She shared a room with them and they brought her up from a very vulnerable child. A lot of the time, foster carers are left to pick up the pieces themselves. In my relatives' situation, baby and baby book were handed to a new family. It all worked out very well in the end but it is very important that there be provision of counselling, that foster carers are remunerated adequately and that we look after them into their old age for the service they do for the State.
The same applies to our childcare providers. We all rely on them, day in and out, or have close family members who do so, as part of rearing children. Pay, retention and progression in their careers are all extremely important. I would like to know more about what measures the Department is undertaking in that regard.
Surrogacy is another issue very close to my heart. It will be dealt with by the Department of Health under the Health (Assisted Human Reproduction) Act but I wonder whether the Minister has any thoughts on surrogacy leave.
Reference was made to the Child Poverty Monitor report this week. Tusla's referrals have absolutely skyrocketed but its staff has increased by only 30%. Are there plans to address that?
The Minister mentioned the DEIS model. I am not sure whether it really falls within her remit but I find it quite a complex area to understand. In a rural part of my constituency, there is one primary school that is under DEIS but the secondary school in the same area is not. I am not sure whether that falls under this discussion but I wanted to put the question to her.