Dr. Niall Muldoon:

Yes, I do. There is no doubt about it. Across the board, children and parents are starting to understand their rights. They are fighting much harder. That is why things are complicated. Parents know their rights better. When we do the rights education workshop with children, we always say we are working two generations ahead. Those children we are informing now will be the priests, doctors, nurses, lawyers, gardaí and TDs of the future. They will understand their rights and they will fight for them.

There is a significant increase in awareness of that and of the importance of children's rights. We are trying to make it the most natural thing in the world that every Department would think about children from the start, whether it needs to or not. Thinking about children should be part of what they do. The system would then develop in a much better way and we would not be playing catch-up to fix broken elements.