Ms Maria Joyce:

It is a matter of the roll-out of these really positive initiatives across the country. The apprenticeship programme in conjunction with Cork is really welcome, but it is in one location. While it is welcome, it is not going to capture the breadth of the country when it is in one location. It is about looking at a more targeted approach from the national perspective. We even see, from the HIQA reports we referred to in the bigger submission we sent in, that some of the areas are looking at the foster care system. Some of the localities have started to do some work in terms of increasing Traveller families in that space, but there are big gaps in that as well in other locations. HIQA has identified that across a number of reports. This will require a sustained approach. You cannot eradicate generations of intergenerational disadvantage, poverty and systemic racism in a short-term response. It is looking at a significant approach from a national perspective at recruitment stages and all levels of Tusla.

It is also about engagement with the community with all levels of Tusla as it exists. In many of the situations, it is at crisis point when Tusla is engaging with families, where there is huge fear as well, whereas that preventative approach with engagement with some of what we have spoken about, such as senior social workers engaging with the community and with families prior to crisis, building trust and building relationships will be significant. Unless we start to see that in a more sustained way, we are still going to have situations where too many of our children will be in a care system that does not actually value or recognise in the absolute holistic way that they need to where Traveller children are coming from. We point to when children are coming out of the care system who have not had the engagement.

We have seen evidence of young adults coming out of the care system - they have grown up in it and some of them have been well cared for by settled families - who do not identify as a settled person but also do not identify as a Traveller because they have been removed from the community. That is not satisfactory and should not be acceptable to the State. The only way to address that is through comprehensive measures, both within the recruitment process and in the way in which the service is delivered and engages with families and by ensuring more family supports are provided to keep the children in the community without having to live in risk.