Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 22 January 2026
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Children and Equality
Child Poverty and Deprivation: Discussion (Resumed)
2:00 am
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I welcome Deputy John Connolly, who was appointed to the committee by the Dáil this week. He is replacing Deputy Seán Ó Fearghaíl. You are very welcome, Deputy Connolly, and we look forward to working with you and having your input on this committee.
Apologies have been received this morning from Senator Nikki Bradley.
The agenda item for consideration this morning is child poverty and deprivation, resumed. As members will be aware, the meeting this morning is split into two sessions. In the first session we will engage with representatives from the Office of the Ombudsman for Children and in the second session with representatives from Tusla, the Child and Family Agency. The representatives from the office of the ombudsman joining us in the first session are Dr. Tricia Keilthy, head of policy, and Ms Nuala Ward, director of investigations. You are both very welcome to the meeting this morning. The purpose of the meeting is to continue our discussion on the challenges facing children living and at risk of living in poverty.
Before we begin, as usual, I have a few housekeeping matters to go through. I do not think we have anybody on Teams. I remind members of the constitutional requirement that if they are to take part on Teams, they must be physically present within the confines of Leinster House. We will see later if we have anybody online.
To our witnesses, in advance of inviting you to deliver your opening statement, I advise you of the following in relation to parliamentary privilege. You are protected by absolute privilege in respect of the presentation you make today to the committee. This means that you have an absolute defence against any defamation action for anything you say at the meeting. However, you are expected not to abuse this privilege, and it is my duty as Cathaoirleach to ensure that that privilege is not abused. Therefore, if your statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, you will be directed to discontinue your remarks. It is imperative that you comply with any such request.
You will be allocated three minutes' speaking time to deliver your opening statement, and this will be followed by a question-and-answer session with members. Dr. Keilthy, I now invite you to deliver your opening statement.
Dr. Tricia Keilthy:
I thank the members of the committee for inviting the Ombudsman for Children's office to provide our perspectives on child poverty and deprivation. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child gives all children the right to an adequate standard of living. However, the State is currently failing to uphold this right as over 260,000 children live in households experiencing deprivation. The reality behind these figures is children growing up in homes that are cold and mouldy and children going without a decent breakfast or arriving to school in a uniform that is worn out or does not quite fit. It is the reality of not inviting friends over or going to a birthday party or having a local park nearby in which to play safely. Poverty deprives children not only of their basic needs but also of opportunity and of reaching their potential.
There is no quick fix to child poverty, but we can solve it. To do that, we need to recognise that childhood poverty is driven by structural injustices rooted in the housing crisis, low income and inadequate provision of services for children. While Ireland's system of government and public administration is organised along sectoral lines, children and their lives do not fit neatly into these silos. Co-ordination is crucial in the context of child poverty, where measures sit across the remit of several Departments, including children, education, social protection, health and housing. Since the establishment of the child poverty and well-being unit, there has been greater co-ordination across Departments. However, a sustained focus on child poverty over the term of this Government will be needed to make a meaningful difference. This must start by implementing child rights budgeting. Despite this being recommended by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2016 and 2023, we are concerned at the lack of sufficient progress on it, which creates difficulties in evaluating the effectiveness of expenditure on children. Until we have a full understanding of the budgets being made available for, and being spent on, children, we cannot adequately plan and resource children's services and supports. We need to integrate child rights impact assessments into the budget process to ensure that fiscal decisions are compliant with obligations under the UNCRC.
In terms of service provision, we need to provide access to universal basic services in line with our commitments under the EU child guarantee and strengthen interagency co-ordination and collaboration at national and local levels. Our complaint and investigations team see daily the negative effects that deficits in service provision have on children. Families and children should be able to access the supports they need in a timely manner and without having to navigate a fragmented system. The essence of any child poverty strategy should be increased investment in prevention and early intervention measures. It is not acceptable that we continue to allocate significant resources to plug gaps in the system in a short-term way, allowing issues to get worse and storing up problems for further down the line, leading to a much greater human and economic cost.
The social protection system must provide for a minimum essential standard of living for children and use evidence to direct available resources to those at greatest risk. Article 2 of the UNCRC requires states to actively identify individual children and groups of children who may require special measures in the realisation of their rights. Disabled children, Traveller and Roma children, children growing up in one-parent families and those in kinship-care families face a much greater risk of poverty, and supports must be provided in recognition of this risk.
Children living in direct provision can face extreme deprivatio, yet the child benefit payments promised in budget 2024 have never been provided. Related to this is our concern regarding the deficits in the collection of comprehensive disaggregated data on marginalised groups of children. Efforts to include data on the living standards of Traveller and Roma children, children seeking asylum and children in emergency accommodation should also be made to ensure those not counted in official poverty statistics are represented.
Most important, we need to listen to children and ensure their voices are heard, as is their right. Only by listening to children, and including them in decision-making, will we get closer to tackling child poverty. Finally, the OCO believes that full and direct incorporation of the UNCRC into domestic law is the single most important thing we can do to protect and promote children's rights. It puts children and their rights at the heart of every decision. It gives us a stronger basis to ensure we are keeping our promises to children, and that includes a childhood free from poverty.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Gabhaim buíochas le Dr. Keilthy. It is proposed to publish the opening statement to the Oireachtas website. Is that agreed? Agreed.
Before I call on members, I advise them that, as this meeting is split into two sessions, for the first part they will only be allocated five minutes' speaking time, and this allocation must include the responses from the witnesses, so they should please try to be as brief as possible as we have to finish this session by 10.40 a.m. to move on to the next session. Given the time constraints we are under this morning, I will be stricter than I usually am, which is pretty strict anyway. When members are putting their questions, I ask them to strictly adhere to the agenda topic under consideration at this meeting. I now call on members, roughly in accordance with the speaking rota. Does Deputy Kerrane want to start and then we will move Deputy Ward to her spot?
Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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I thank both witnesses for coming in this morning and for a really informative opening statement. It is important to say that in Ireland in 2026, far too many children - of course, one child is too many - are not living the childhood experience they deserve to live. That has an impact on every part of their life, including their later life from their teenage years and into their adulthood, if not forever.
When we look at the SILC data on the deprivation rate, the rate of children at risk of poverty and those in consistent poverty, it is unfortunate that when we get those figures they are always behind. They do not give us today's picture, but they are the data most of us rely on. Has anything been done or are we going in the right direction in any areas in terms of bringing those numbers down? We have seen increases in those figures at a time when we would very much hope to see them coming down, in particular when the country is doing well economically. Are there two or three areas we could point to and say this is going in the right direction but we need to do more, whatever that may be?
Is the child poverty and well-being unit making a difference? Are we seeing tangible actions from that unit, or do we need to see an awful lot more? I will start with those questions.
Dr. Tricia Keilthy:
First, in relation to the data and where we think the biggest impact could be made, we feel some of the initiatives are having a good impact as well. There has been a good investment in education in recent years. For example, the free schoolbooks scheme is something that we can see making a big difference to families and children who go to school and in the past did not have everything they needed to learn. Having the schoolbooks there reduces the pressure on families.
The DEIS+ scheme is also really important. We are going to look at the roll-out of that in terms of its impact on children. Where we continue to see issues is around housing and social protection supports. The last budget did give a significant increase in terms of the qualified child payment, but it is still below what children need to live a dignified life and to meet their minimum needs. We really need to look at the social protection system to make sure that it is responding effectively to the needs of children. We welcome that the Government will now be developing a new child and family homelessness strategy. This is a really important opportunity to get to grips with the housing crisis, which impacts children in so many different ways. That is going to be something that the Government is going to have to prioritise over the long term.
We have seen the work of the child poverty and well-being unit in budgets. We are getting greater visibility in terms of where the investments are going but if we are going to really tackle child poverty, as we mentioned in our opening statement, we have to move towards child rights budgeting. That is ensuring that we are doing those impact assessments. If we are not making positive changes in relation to children, then we need to look at new measures. Data is a problem. It is really important that every child is included in our official poverty statistics. The fact that children in direct provision, Traveller and Roma children and children in emergency accommodation are not counted in official statistics is an issue because then we cannot know where the resources need to go.
Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Dr. Keilthy. The Vincentian Partnership has been around for a long time, and the MESL has been in the ether for a very long time. The case I have always made for it is that we would avoid the circus we have every year ahead of the budget of a fiver for this one and a fiver for that one. The MESL is the best we can do in terms of meeting the basic standard of living for people, including different groups in rural and urban areas. Are we making any progress on that?
Dr. Tricia Keilthy:
I do think the fact that we now have a higher rate of qualified child payment is recognition from the Department of Social Protection of the evidence that is provided by the Vincentian MESL Research Centre, but again we must look ahead and ensure that it is meeting the needs of children and using evidence to make those decisions.
Mike Kennelly (Fine Gael)
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I welcome the witnesses this morning and their statement, which identifies the challenges children face in this country. I have a few observations on it. Dr. Keilthy stated that families and children should be able to access the supports they need in a timely manner and that they have to navigate a fragmented system. What gaps in service provision that have been identified should be highlighted and targeted by the committee to ensure that no child is left in poverty or without a home?
Ms Nuala Ward:
I thank Senator Kennelly very much for his question. From a complaints and investigations point of view, we hear directly from children and families who are incredibly desperate to get access to what we would consider the most basic health services. As the Senator is aware, there are incredible waiting lists for paediatric dental services. I am not sure if we fully grasp the impact that has, not only on children's oral health but also on their overall health, because oral and physical health are intrinsically linked. We are deeply concerned about that. We are engaging with the HSE because of the waiting list. Obviously, the dental screening system in schools has pretty much collapsed. We are dealing with really stark cases because when some of these children with severe orthopaedic needs are being missed at the time they need it, which is the point the Senator makes, the results for them can be catastrophic. We have one child who is looking at needing to have her jaw broken twice because she spent five years waiting for treatment. She would never have needed it if she had got the treatment she needed at the time.
We are also deeply concerned about public health developmental checks. The country needs to move really strongly towards an infant-focused public health model because the current cradle to grave model is just not sufficient. As we know from Equal Start and all of the other excellent Government initiatives, the zero to five stage is critical for the development of children. We would be very focused on access to basic universal services. I am sure members have heard countless stories of families waiting for an assessment of need being told that their children desperately need speech and language therapy to be able to communicate with them but also being told that there are waiting lists of three or four years. I am not going to repeat that because I have no doubt that this is something members hear commonly. We are talking here about basic health services and that is what we are really worried about. It is all very well for those families that are able to go private, but for the vast majority, that is way beyond their means at this moment in time.
Mike Kennelly (Fine Gael)
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It is a huge area that we have to explore in order to make life a lot better for children living in poverty and deprivation. Early assessments by the HSE are critical in the context of poverty. Intervention must be HSE led and the target must be all of the children of this country.
The witnesses made reference to the fact that children living in direct provision could face extreme deprivation, yet the child benefit payment promised in budget 2024 has never been provided. Can the witnesses explain why that has not happened?
Dr. Tricia Keilthy:
We are not sure. We cannot answer that question. It was committed to in budget 2024. The commitment was to pay the equivalent of a child benefit payment to children in direct provision based on the principle of equality. We do not know why it has not been delivered yet but it is really important. We did a consultation with children living in direct provision and it starkly showed the difficulties they faced in terms of poverty, deprivation and exclusion.
Mike Kennelly (Fine Gael)
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No payment was ever made to any parents or guardians of children in direct provision. Is that correct?
Dr. Tricia Keilthy:
There is a daily allowance payment that children and adults receive but there was a recommendation going back a while that there should be a payment equivalent to child benefit for children living in direct provision.
Mike Kennelly (Fine Gael)
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That is a really big worry for us and a matter that this committee should focus on. We should try to determine why these payments have not been given to those vulnerable people.
Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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I thank both of our witnesses for coming in and for their opening statements. I want to ask about child rights budgeting. I ask the witnesses to explain that a bit more, including how it works in other jurisdictions. Does the child poverty and well-being unit have an action plan within each Department outlining how it will try to reduce child poverty and deprivation? Is it based on outcomes? Are the budgets that are given to each Department based on performance? How does it work?
Dr. Tricia Keilthy:
I thank the Senator for her question, which is a good one. One of the priorities of the child poverty and well-being unit is to look at ways in which there can be a more whole-of-government approach to the issue of child poverty so that when it comes to budget time, there is a joined-up approach. The aim is to ensure that one Department is not providing a service that may be taken away from another Department, because it can be quite siloed.
If we look to other countries, New Zealand introduced the Child Poverty Reduction Act a number of years ago. That requires the Government, when it is preparing its annual budget, to do a proper assessment in relation to where the expenditure was going. One of the challenges we have here is that a lot of Departments do not know how much of their budget is actually allocated to children. That would be the first step. We need to know how much we are already spending on children. Then we need to look at the effectiveness of that spending. If we are introducing new measures, we need to determine whether their impact on children will be positive or negative.
Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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Is there a plan to do that within Departments, to look at the impact so far of what has been spent in each Department on children?
Dr. Tricia Keilthy:
In the Young Ireland policy framework, there is a commitment to child rights budgeting. There was a pilot in 2019 that took data from a number of different Departments to see what was feasible with the existing data that Departments held. That has not been progressed but I understand that it is a priority for the Department going into 2026. That is something that we will be watching very closely because it is really important.
Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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Can the witnesses see any improvements? Staffing is clearly a huge issue within the HSE and Tusla. Have interagency approaches or the use of Meitheal increased? How can that be resourced more? I am referring here to the resourcing of things like addiction services. I know from my own experience that practitioners on the ground find it hard to attend those Meitheal meetings because they have to do their own work. Is there any way that can be supported more? How could that inter-agency approach, both nationally and locally, be improved?
Ms Nuala Ward:
That is a really good question. We have been banging that drum for a long time because inter-agency co-operation can be transformative for families and children. Everyone needs to be at the table. We completely support that. We have heard from families who found Meitheal extraordinarily helpful. It has been really powerful and really good for families. It feels very non-judgmental and supportive, which is exactly what we need in terms of dignity and respecting the rights of parents and children. It is about assessing the impact of it, as the Senator has just said, and determining how we can grow it. It is about listening to the families and children who have been through it in order to figure out how to make it better. As we all know, early prevention is the absolute key here for every child.
Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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In my own experience, staffing is the issue. We need a model that ensures it becomes part of everyone's work rather than the way it is at the moment whereby it is up to the lead practitioners to make referrals. It should be built into everyone's work within all sectors that they will attend Meitheals and there should be provision for that within the workplace.
Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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That is brilliant.
Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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That is great.
Finally, the witnesses said that the full and direct incorporation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into domestic law is "the single most important thing" we can do to protect and promote children's rights. Is there any move to do that? The witnesses said that the Child Poverty Reduction Act in New Zealand was having an impact. Is that something they would like to see here?
Dr. Tricia Keilthy:
Yes. It is a strategic priority of the office to drive full and direct incorporation of the UNCRC into law. Other countries have done it. Scotland has fully incorporated the text into its law, which means that children can use the courts in relation to their rights if those are not being upheld. It would support cultural change so that things like child rights budgeting would be an obligation for the State. We are going to be continuing that conversation in terms of what that would mean. It is about considering children's rights when decision makers are developing and implementing policies.
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the witnesses for their opening statements. To be clear, the core role of the office is to investigate referrals made by people, including families on behalf of children, who feel that the State has not provided them with adequate services or they have not received the services they deserve. Is it fair to say that is the core role of the office?
Ms Nuala Ward:
We have two key roles. Obviously, one of them is to take complaints from children directly or on their behalf in relation to services provided or funded by the State. We also have a critical role in promoting the rights of children, consulting directly with children and influencing Government policy. It is a lot broader than dealing with complaints but we obviously take whatever we can learn from our complaints to inform the work of Dr. Keilthy and her team in relation to policy.
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I know it is not the focus of our discussion today but on average, how many complaints would the office receive annually?
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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Does the office use an ethnic identifier?
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I am wondering, in the context of the complaints the office receives and the references in the opening statement to targeted measures for certain groups, if Ms Ward has any idea of what proportion of complaints are from families represented by those groups?
Ms Nuala Ward:
We are able to do so for Travellers. We have had a number of complaints, mainly to do with accommodation. As the Deputy may know, we did a very significant investigation into the horrendous conditions of children on a halting site. That is a really good example of the impact of growing up in poverty - in lots of ways, State-enabled poverty - because the local authorities did not take the steps to make sure that the children were living in safe conditions that promoted well-being. I would advise that if the Deputy is looking to hear directly from children, which is a key recommendation that we bring to the committee, he should watch the video. It says what the children experienced every day. Again, with direct provision, we go out and visit those children as well, and we go into homeless accommodation.
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the proposal that there would be engagement with children and that they would be listened to. I cannot remember the term, but they would be part of the decision-making process. The OCO is currently doing that. How would the witnesses advise the legislators to do that?
Ms Nuala Ward:
As we understand it, the child and poverty well-being unit already has its own youth consultative panel. In its action plan, the unit has committed to consulting directly with children. The UK childcare commissioner did an excellent publication last year on directly talking to children about their experience of poverty and what it was like to grow up and see their mums and dads so stressed about finances. It was very powerful. There would be no difficulty whatsoever with us doing that here. We would support it in every way we could because we do a lot of direct consultation with children.
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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That would be welcome.
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I have a similar question that may have been asked previously. How does the child's rights impact assessment work mechanically?
Dr. Tricia Keilthy:
There are a number of different methodologies that you can use. It comes back to the data. It is more difficult to do a good child's rights impact assessment if you do not have good data but another key component of it is consulting with children and young people on a particular policy to ask them exactly how it is going to impact their lives in a positive or negative way. There is good methodology there and we just need to start doing it. There has definitely been more consultation with children and young people across Departments. That is really positive, but we need to make sure that we are including them when there is an impact because they are the experts in their own lives and children and young people have some of the best solutions when they are directly listened to.
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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To go back to the question I had about the ethnic identifier, there was a comment in the opening statement I want to ask about that is relevant to this. It states: "Related to this is our concern regarding the deficits in the collection of comprehensive disaggregated data on marginalised groups of children [as highlighted by the UN committee]." Would it not be preferable to use an ethnic identifier?
Ms Nuala Ward:
I understand. We just want to make sure we do it right. I agree with the Deputy's point. We are a small office, so we have a good sense of it but I understand what the Deputy says because it will enable us to target specific areas. Thankfully, on the basis of a lot of research, we know where we need to go.
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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Going back to 1,700 cases, how many of them are linked to the fact that the family or child is enduring poverty?
Ms Nuala Ward:
I do not have exact numbers but what we see is the direct impact for children who are living in emergency accommodation. We hear directly from them. We did a consultation with them and it was harrowing. As I said before at this committee, we cannot underestimate the shame that children feel and how long that lasts. It can last a lifetime.
Charles Ward (Donegal, 100% Redress Party)
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I thank the witnesses for coming in today. I am aware of what is going on in my constituency regarding defective concrete and the impact it has had upon the children. Are the witnesses aware of organisations or have they been contacted by groups or families within the areas impacted by defective concrete?
Dr. Tricia Keilthy:
We have been in contact with families that have been impacted about the impact it is having on their children both in their home environments and in schools or community centres affected by defective blocks. We have written to the Minister for Health and the Minister for children in relation to this to ensure that there are supports there for those children who are impacted.
Charles Ward (Donegal, 100% Redress Party)
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Dr. Keilthy talked about a value per head per child in terms of what it would take to lift a child out of poverty. What would she estimate the figure to be?
Dr. Tricia Keilthy:
If we look at the minimum essential standard of living data, which looks at what is needed to live a dignified life in Ireland – it is done for different household types - and based on the latest data for second level-aged children at the moment, about 60% to 70% of the basic needs of children are met through the social protection system. There is about a 30% gap. It meets more of the minimum needs for children of primary school age. It is about the evidence there. We need to look at where the gap is and try to bridge that gap because if every child can go to school, they have everything they need and they can do all the things that every child takes for granted. That is the goal and what we want to get to.
Charles Ward (Donegal, 100% Redress Party)
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In Ireland in the past two to three years, we have seen inflation and heat poverty go through the roof. We have seen people relying more on food banks. Would the figure take into consideration these factors that are emerging and slowly moving forward?
Dr. Tricia Keilthy:
Absolutely. We have to take into account the cost-of-living impacts and how inflation changes year on year. We also need to ensure that there is a floor to our social protection system that no child is expected to live below. It is about raising the floor up and then ensuring that our social protection system is keeping pace with inflation and the cost of living as well.
Charles Ward (Donegal, 100% Redress Party)
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I thank Dr. Keilthy.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Cuirim fáilte roimh na finnéithe. We are talking about 260,000 children living in households experiencing deprivation. I get the point about the fact that we need to see where the gap is and it is about making sure people have the absolute basics in relation to being able to live the life that everybody deserves. Whether we are talking about the issues in the public domain or anecdotal issues raised with us as constituency representatives, we have all seen a huge level of increase in complex cases. There is generational poverty and trauma, addiction, drugs, and mental health issues that also impact on that. As much as we have to deal with the fact that there are 260,000 children that are in the wrong bracket from the point of view of having all that they need, we also need a far more concentrated effort on those that are in real suffering and deprivation, whom the State is failing. The idea is to have proper early interventions of significant impact and then in some cases that children can be removed from scenarios that are not good for them or anyone else. I am not saying that is the first port of call. Obviously, if we can do the early interventions, we can improve lives and do whatever else. I would welcome the opinion of the witnesses on this. I assume they agree.
Ms Nuala Ward:
It is really important that as a country we recognise the impact of social inequality and inequalities in terms of policy that impact on the ability of parents to do their job, and for them to do what they need to do and want to do.
Not that the Deputy is saying it, but we need to move away from the strong perception of parental blame. Sometimes, it is absolutely the fault of the parents. That is true. They need support to be able to parent properly. However, when you ask a mother whose toddler is not meeting developmental checks because there is nowhere to stretch them out on the floor of emergency homeless accommodation, or the same with direct provision, and they cannot cook for their own children, these are all issues that we need to address systemically because that is not the fault of the parents. We need to look at the children who are growing up in emergency accommodation and direct provision and on halting sites that are not fit for purpose. The range of issues involved are not the fault of the parents and have nothing to do with them, but they are impacting on their ability to parent their children the way they want.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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I completely agree with Ms Ward. We constantly talk about it. Even those who are involved in interventions say they are not early enough in some cases, they are not significant enough and they are not for long enough. Therefore, by doing this we could save families from deprivation and poverty. We could deal with some of the issues that are out there and say what was needed. I have also seen scenarios of brutal cases.
I have seen alternatives where children have been taken away from what are brutal circumstances and their lives have been much improved. It is a matter of doing all of it. We do not have the resources, from foster carers right through, for what we need. My fear is that, sometimes, we are not having the real conversation. We might have a bit of it here but I do not think it happens in politics across the board. That is why I would love if someone would come in and say that, yes, there is the figure of 260,000 but we are also talking about a smaller cohort of people whom we are failing miserably and need to do a piece of work on. It is about providing that information.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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I would love to have answers to all of this. It is about that piece of work that the Ombudsman for Children is doing around the gap. We all accept housing is a disaster for a significant number of people. It makes their lives incredibly difficult. The inability to get services, whether they relate to disability or mental health, allows for circumstances to get much worse. On some level, a piece of work needs to be done on setting out, in general, the need because if we know what the need is, we know what needs to be done.
Margaret Murphy O'Mahony (Fianna Fail)
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I welcome both the witnesses here this morning and thank them for their opening statement. Indeed, I thank them for the great work they do in highlighting some very hard cases. They mentioned that the Ombudsman for Children includes children in policy recommendations. Will the witnesses expand on that? How do they do so in a child-friendly way? What age groups are included? How do they go about doing that?
Dr. Tricia Keilthy:
Our participation and rights education team does a lot of this work. We have a youth advisory panel that is made up of approximately 30 young people, ranging in ages from 13 to 17. If there is a particular piece of work that we are doing on a policy issue, we try to consult them. Our participation team has great skills in engaging with children and young people in order that they feel confident in expressing their views on particular policy issues. We then take that information and incorporate it into our policy work. This does not happen for all of our policy work, however, due to the time and capacity of our young people to be able to respond to all the different consultations that we may be involved in, but we think it is important. Young people would blow you away with the solutions they come up with. They are really valuable to our work.
The other strand the participation team does is consultations with children and young people. This year, we are doing a large project about at-risk young people who fall through the cracks and end up in detention, in touch with the law or in special care. We will carry out a large-scale consultation with those young people over the next few months. That will be important as well. It is also relevant to the conversation we are having here today.
Margaret Murphy O'Mahony (Fianna Fail)
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It is great to include young people because, obviously, they are the ones impacted. The Ombudsman for Children does not deal with younger children with regard to the policymaking. Is 13 the start age?
Ms Nuala Ward:
It has had younger children in. We also run education workshops to teach children about their rights. We have had the younger cohort in. They come into our office. They might do it as part of a school tour for the day. The younger ones can certainly be heard. There is no problem at all in that regard. They bring great life to the place. The team is going to grow on that because the Senator is right; the opinions of that cohort can be missed out.
Margaret Murphy O'Mahony (Fianna Fail)
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It would be important.
Margaret Murphy O'Mahony (Fianna Fail)
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Obviously, it must be age appropriate or whatever. With regard to budgeting for children's rights, if the witnesses had a magic wand and could get anything they wanted, what would their wish be?
Dr. Tricia Keilthy:
It would be that, when it comes to the budget and Cabinet decisions, children and their rights would be considered in every decision that comes up at Cabinet and we would have those data I mentioned earlier that would allow us to know how much Departments are spending on children and how effective that expenditure is in terms of the impact it is having on children. That would be the ideal. Again, it is about considering in every decision, particularly at budget time, that there is a joined-up approach. Are we maximising the resources available to ensure we are upholding, advancing, promoting and protecting children's rights? It is just having that common thread throughout the budget process to ensure we are living up to our obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, UNCRC.
Margaret Murphy O'Mahony (Fianna Fail)
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With regard to data, such as data on Traveller and Roma children and children with a disability or whatever, what data reforms do the witnesses recommend?
Dr. Tricia Keilthy:
At the moment, the main poverty indicators are derived from the survey of income and living conditions, SILC. Those groups of children are not counted so we do not know the deprivation rate for Traveller children or children living in direct provision or emergency accommodation, and those children experience the most extreme forms of poverty. We need to look at how we can include those children in survey collection and data. It is positive that the new child poverty target will have a multidimensional dashboard. It will take a holistic view of the impact of poverty on children's lives. If we speak to a child about the deprivation indicators we have, such as having a meal with protein twice a week, are they the things children think of when they think about deprivation? There is a piece of work to do with regard to how we measure poverty and ensuring we include those children who are most marginalised in the data collection.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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I thank the witnesses for being here this morning. In the witnesses’ opening statement - I am going back to the data again - there are over 260,000 children living in households experiencing deprivation. Does that figure primarily capture children and families already receiving State income supports? How does it amount to children in working families who earn too much to qualify for supports but still cannot meet the cost of living, housing, food, energy and childcare? If children in the working poor are not fully captured, what additional data research or indicators are needed so that the policy responses to child poverty do not systemically overlook those families and children
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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Does the data the witnesses have this morning, that figure of 260,000 children, cover those working families and the working poor we have today?
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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In that figure of 260,000.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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It is not just the families who are getting State support.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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Okay. Is any additional research or data needed?
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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Okay. When it comes to collaboration and local delivery, are we organised backwards? It is mentioned in the opening statement that we need to strengthen interagency co-ordination and collaboration at national and local levels. The Ombudsman for Children emphasises co-ordination across Departments but the report from the Child Law Project, Falling Through the Cracks, shows that, in practice, children often suffer precisely because services are fragmented and delivered through national agencies rather than integrated locally. Should we be asking a more fundamental question, not how agencies collaborate but whether Ireland's highly centralised agency-driven model of child and family services is the right one at all? In light of how social services are delivered in many EU countries through strong, well-resourced local authorities or community-based systems, would the ombudsman support a shift towards genuinely local provision of children's services rather than a co-ordinated approach between national bodies?
Ms Nuala Ward:
Absolutely. In our submission to the Child Care Act, we emphasised strongly that children must be kept in their community.
If children are taken into care, they need to be protected and kept within the network of family that they can access. They need to be either kept with their siblings or have regular and frequent access to them at a local level. That would minimise the trauma on children that may have to be taken into care. Such children may actually be able to return to their families eventually. The local level is key.
The Meitheal model is excellent but it needs to be developed further. We have excellent children's and young people's services committees, CYPSCs, in this country but I do not think they have been maximised enough in terms of understanding the specific needs in specific areas. Sometimes we can make the fatal mistake of using a national policy lens on every child in the country but there is a huge difference between what children in rural areas consider deprivation versus children in urban areas. We hear from children in rural areas who cannot get to anything because there is no public transport and their parents do not have a car. These are things that we would not think of as adults or as people living in urban areas. The local area is so important. We need to know the local area needs and wants and to deliver that.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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Having local authority-led models would-----
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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Not local authority but community-based systems.
Ms Nuala Ward:
Yes, community based systems. We have wonderful family resource centres and fantastic NGOs at a local level that can walk into family homes because families trust them and know them. We should build on that because children need to be staying in their local areas where they feel safe and known, where they might have some excellent family connections and their friends.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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There was a comment made earlier by another Senator in relation to parents who are in poverty and children who are in poverty as a result of that. It was suggested that kids should be removed from those situations. To me, kids should never be removed because of poverty. They may be really good parents but because of their circumstances, they may not be able to look after those children sufficiently. That is why family support is so important. Unfortunately, we do not have that model of care in this country to the level that it should be at. No child should be removed from their parents because of poverty.
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I thank the witnesses for being here this morning. It is hard to follow such a comprehensive list of speakers and dialogue. I am trying to ignore the will in me to get a bit philosophical but I will go there for a second, if I can. As a committee we have covered this in depth over the last few months, as the witnesses will have seen from the various groups and organisations that have appeared before us. Quite often we end up speaking about poverty as it manifests itself, as it shows up for children or as it identifies itself. If we look at the causation of poverty, would the witnesses agree with my back-of-the-napkin analysis that poverty ultimately is a construct and is the outcome of societal policy failure?
Ms Nuala Ward:
I am sure that, with his philosophical background, the Deputy has read the research focusing on poverty as a symptom of State failures, including the State's failure to invest properly in children's services. As the Deputy says, poverty is not just a construct but is actually a symptom. That is what happens when we fail to plan, fail to give adequate resources for children and fail to move quickly in response to the cost-of-living crisis. The world is changing. We know that. Everything is changing and we need to be much sharper and much quicker to invest in children and families. It is a very interesting point and is linked to the Senator's comments in relation to the profound impact of poverty on the ability of parents to parent a child. It is the child, fundamentally, who suffers.
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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It has a lifelong impact. We know that. My concern is that there is an acceptance creep. There is a normalisation process occurring within our State whereby a certain level of child poverty or societal poverty is okay. We reside in a capitalist, neoliberal society that encourages us to mind our own and not to worry so much about our communities or our neighbours. As a result, we see levels of child poverty becoming okay. The numbers wash off our backs, much like with child homelessness. A certain percentage becomes accepted or normalised. If it is a construct and a symptom, what is the surest way to work towards eradication as opposed to acceptance?
Ms Nuala Ward:
One key message that is really important for policy creators and decision makers is that we must have an empathetic approach to poverty. We cannot have a judgmental approach. People need support and they need to be treated with dignity and respect because that is what we do. That is what we do as a country and that is part of our values. The Deputy is right that there has been a shift towards blame and a shift towards telling people to do it themselves and to get themselves out of poverty, but that is wrong. We are living in an unequal society. There are children being born who are just not being given the same chances as other children. We need an empathy-driven, non-judgmental approach to the welfare and supports that some people need. Some people may only need them for a brief time while others may need them for longer because of the circumstances they are in, including, for example, having specific disabilities or specific disadvantages. We need to accept that as a country. Our values should drive our policies and they should come from a place of empathy and support.
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Having listened so comprehensively to children and young people over the years as well as to many other stakeholders, do the witnesses believe we capture enough the intersectional nature of the impact of poverty on groups who are already suffering structural inequality and discrimination? The ethnic identifier is really important. It is a crucial piece that the State needs to ambitiously roll out. Is there a bigger piece of work that we need to do nationally to highlight that without impinging on the stigma associated with that and without trying to force people to self-advocate? Can we do more to better understand the intersectionality of this?
Dr. Tricia Keilthy:
It comes back to listening to children and young people and hearing their day-to-day experiences. We talk about energy poverty, food poverty and so on and tend to compartmentalise it, but poverty means that people do not have enough to live and participate in society like everyone else does. It is also about going back to the ambition. The child poverty target is 3% or less but the ambition should be an end to child poverty. We can have a discussion around whether that is possible but it absolutely is. We are a rich country and we should have the ambition that no child in any household or community is going without what he or she needs to feel normal.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I will begin by referring back to a point that was made earlier. We will be having an engagement with children in the coming weeks. We are endeavouring to do that on every single topic so we will do it in relation to child poverty and deprivation. Our next topic after that is online safety.
On the UNCRC, will the witnesses outline the impact this could have on tackling child poverty and deprivation? I attended a session run by the office a few months ago on this, although I was segregated from the children and was with the adults and youth groups. It was great to hear what was happening in Scotland and to hear the opinions of youth workers, but what were the summary outcomes from the children themselves? I listened to some of the keynote speeches from some of the youth champions that were there but I missed the informal discussions. I am wondering what the outcomes from the children were and how they felt the full implementation would make a difference, especially in relation to poverty.
Dr. Tricia Keilthy:
The overarching message from the children and young people was that incorporation is an opportunity for them to feel like they are being properly listened to and are not an afterthought. Incorporation would mean that their rights, views and opinions would be part of how we make policy, implement laws and deliver services. The child's right to be heard is one of the key general principles of the UNCRC and that is what they value. They are concerned about the housing crisis, the cost-of-living crisis and climate change. All of these issues are coming to the fore for them but they do not feel they are properly listened to. For them, they see that making their rights real under the UNCRC law creates the potential for them to be part of the discussion and not sidelined.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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The witnesses mentioned in their opening statement things like no birthday parties and no proper place to play. This is something that I feel really passionate about. Having visited some emergency accommodation centres, I am aware that the play piece is often an afterthought but it is so important to not feeling in poverty and still feeling like a child. What do we need to do in that regard? Do we need set minimum standards in relation to recreation and play in direct provision centres, emergency accommodation and IPAS centres?
What are the witnesses' thoughts on that? What would it look like?
Ms Nuala Ward:
We agree. We have been in different places and, even in the places that did have playgrounds, which were few and far between, those playgrounds were in terrible conditions. We were able to take steps to fix that for children. It is not only about areas of deprivation. I know about the need to have standards. Even on the halting site, the little kids were telling us that all they had to play with were puddles. There are big plans to drive through areas of play, including simple things like playgrounds. We have also talked to children who do not get to do any extracurricular activities. They do not have the €10 to go on the school tour. We strongly feel there needs to be some mechanism through which schools carry out affordability checks. Schools should be checking whether activities are affordable for all children so they are universal and inclusive. With regard to school uniforms, do we really need branded school uniforms in this day and age? I know there has been guidance and education in that area. I will not go on about it but we have published work on the cost of transition year and the number of children who cannot do it because they cannot afford the trips and so forth. There is definitely a role for schools in looking at affordability. Regardless of children in poverty, children have a great sense of fun and play. Where is our play action plan? Where is the whole-of-government strategy to make sure that local authorities build the playgrounds for children, including in all of those areas the Cathaoirleach has spoken about? We agree that it is sometimes their greatest joy.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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A couple of months ago, I heard on the radio about a community that was trying to save a football pitch. It was an impoverished area. It was not even any kind of a fancy pitch. The local people were talking about stones and getting cuts on your knees. However, they also said that, when they walked in there, it was a safe place and a place to have fun. The witnesses talked about the free schoolbooks initiative. We have also had the hot school meals, which was hotly debated this morning. For one in five children, it is the only hot meal they will get in the day. Are there other practical examples we could consider in the area of extracurricular activities and play? Examples might include vouchers for play centres or soccer clubs. Have the kids or the ombudsman's office come up with anything? Is there a top-five list of initiatives that could be undertaken? We have done free schoolbooks and free school meals. Are there other practical targeted measures the witnesses could mention? They have 14 seconds.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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We have two speakers left. I remind them that we are bringing this session to a close at 10.40 a.m. so they will each have five minutes, which is to include both questions and answers.
Emer Currie (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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I thank the witnesses for coming in. I have just been at a meeting of the education committee, where we are discussing hot school meals. That is obviously a really important initiative in relation to child poverty. I am struck by the scale of the work that Tusla has to do. It has to respond to 100,000 child protection cases and welfare referrals in respect of 50,000 children. In my community, we are building homes and communities. What is Tusla's presence on the ground? The witnesses have said 22,500 children have received family supports. How uniform is their access-----
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I remind the Deputy that the witnesses are from the Ombudsman for Children's Office. Tusla will be here for the next session.
Emer Currie (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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I am sorry. That is the problem with going from one committee meeting to the next. I have a similar question. All of the submissions highlight the importance of multi-agency cross-government support. How do the witnesses think we are doing? What do we need to improve to get to those developing communities and to make sure there is a presence, whether that is youth services or the new local community safety partnerships? If the witnesses would respond to that point, it would be great.
Ms Nuala Ward:
We were speaking earlier about the importance of listening to communities when they tell us what they need. It is very easy to impose what the national government believes but we must listen to the communities. Every parish, town, urban area and rural area has different needs and wants for their children. We have said repeatedly that, in the case of the more highly vulnerable children, it is absolutely necessary that the right service goes into the family. It does not always have to be Tusla. As the committee will know, a couple of years ago, we published Nowhere to Turn, a report on the huge challenges facing the families of children with disabilities. As these children turn 11 or 12, some of these families are struggling to look after them and to protect them from their siblings because of the nature of their needs. There needs to be early intervention, recognition of the needs of the family and a decision as to which is the best service to provide for those needs. That can only be done in a multidisciplinary manner with everyone in the area sitting down to figure out what the child needs. We believe Meitheal is excellent. There are also excellent family resource centres.
Emer Currie (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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We do not have enough of them, however.
Emer Currie (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Family resource centres are an excellent example of the kind of support that is required. As has been said, we must have a "no wrong door" policy and there must be access to nutrition programmes and counselling across the board. There are not enough of these centres in Dublin West. They need to be rolled out and seen more as critical infrastructure.
Ms Nuala Ward:
I absolutely agree. I will just give some feedback and then stop talking. It is particularly important that they are non-judgmental and non-stigmatising. The culture of some of the family resource centres is highly valued by families in the community. As I have said, they have to be matched. If there is a need, we have to match that need.
Aisling Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the witnesses for being here. Like Deputy Currie, I was next door for the education committee's discussion on hot school meals. That is a measure the ombudsman's office will strongly welcome. I was also in the Chamber to ask a question of the Minister for Health. My point is that all of these issues are interlinked and there needs to be cross-departmental support and action. In her opening statement, Dr. Keilthy mentioned the child poverty and well-being unit. Will she expand on the progress that has been made since that unit's establishment?
Dr. Tricia Keilthy:
It has facilitated a better and more joined-up approach to the budget process in relation to child poverty. We have seen greater visibility of the issue of child poverty in recent budgets but we still have a long way to go to ensure it is properly joined-up and that we are looking at the impact of different budgetary decisions on children and young people. It has kept child poverty higher on the agenda of different Departments, including the Departments of housing, Education and Youth, and Social Protection. It is really important that we keep the focus on child poverty at that high level so that it does not get lost among other competing priorities.
Aisling Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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On the budgeting element, Dr. Keilthy was saying this issue is just not getting the support that is needed and that things are not being implemented. Is her office engaging with the child poverty and well-being unit? Is it having separate conversations? I will not say "pushback" but what is causing the delays in cementing that process?
Dr. Tricia Keilthy:
We have been engaging with the child poverty and well-being unit and with the Department of children, which has some commitments relating to child budgeting under Young Ireland. We will continue to engage on that. As I mentioned, there are some limitations in terms of the data Departments hold on expenditure on children. These need to be addressed. Our budgets in Ireland are very much set up on an annual budgetary cycle. That affects long-term planning for services and supports for children because poverty will not be solved in one budget. The lack of multi-annual budgets and ring-fenced budgets for children also creates barriers to bringing about the change that we need. We are looking at sustained investment over time so that children and families can feel secure and know that the supports and services that are available now will still be available into the future.
Aisling Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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Earlier, Dr. Keilthy mentioned the minimum essential standard of living, which I thought was interesting. I presume that is very basic and minimal.
Can Dr. Keilthy explain exactly what she would see that as being?
Dr. Tricia Keilthy:
This is research by the Vincentian MESL Research Centre. It looks at what is needed to meet a minimum essential standard of living, which allows a person to live with dignity and which meets his or hers social, psychological and physical needs. It includes things around social inclusion. It is not the very sharp end of things. It recognises that a person needs a one-week holiday a year, social activities and to meet with people. It is a holistic kind of view of poverty. It is not just about food and energy. It is looking at the whole development of a person and a child.
Aisling Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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One of the witnesses also mentioned that in a lot of kinship care arrangements, those families fall into poverty. The Minister for Children, Disability and Equality is quite active in that area at the moment and it is a key area for her to resolve. How does the Ombudsman for Children's Office feel we are progressing in that area in providing the supports for the additional needs they have?
Ms Nuala Ward:
We have been relentless in pursing this need to support kinship carers and we will continue to do so. We have been engaging, and Dr. Keilthy in particular has been engaging directly with the Department about this issue. I know it is developing policies. It is slow, but it is on the way. We get constantly contacted by grannies who have taken in their grandchildren or from aunties and uncles, but they are struggling; they do not get extra money. There are a lot of hoops to get through for the guardianship payment. They also feel that they are not getting the supports that their children might need because of the trauma they may have gone through when their parents were not available to care for them for a period. Kinship carers are an untapped resource. They are just beneficial for children. The children get to stay with their relatives and stay in the network. They are not taken into care if they do not need to be taken into care. Every effort should be made to build that model up as best we can.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Go raibh maith agaibh members for our timely discussion this morning. I thank the witnesses for engaging with us. If they would like, they can take a minute for their closing remarks, their last thoughts or anything they would like to leave us with as a final thought on the topic of child poverty and deprivation.
Ms Nuala Ward:
We just thank the members very much, first and foremost, for inviting us. We just really welcome that we heard today that the members are going to listen to children and that they will be promoting that we consult with children in whatever decisions we make and that we focus on the dignity and empathetic approach. I just want to ask the members not to forget that and to not lose that. Everyone will have different opinions but if members keep it focussed on the best interests of the children, they cannot go wrong. It was really good to hear that commitment from this committee as well. I thank the members for that.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Go raibh maith agaibh, Ms Ward and Dr. Keilthy. We are a very collaborative committee whose members are working on the same goals but with different opinions sometimes. The meeting will suspend for a few minutes to allow for a changeover of witnesses.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Our new witnesses are very welcome. I thank them for being so patient in waiting for us. Once again, the agenda item for consideration at this session is child poverty and deprivation. Joining us in this second session are representatives of Tusla, the Child and Family Agency: Mr. Gerry Hone, national director, services and integration; Mr. Cormac Quinlan, assistant national director, practice reform; Ms Amy Mulvihill, national manager for prevention, partnership and family support; Mr. Eifion Williams, service director, commissioning; Ms Áine O’Keeffe, director, education support service; and Ms Lorna Kavanagh, interim service director services and integration, separated children seeking international protection service.
The witnesses are all very welcome to this meeting. We had a good discussion with the Ombudsman for Children's Office and we will continue to discuss with the witnesses the challenges facing children living in, or at risk of living in, poverty.
Before Mr. Hone delivers the opening statement, I want to advise the witnesses in relation to parliamentary privilege. They are protected by absolute privilege in respect of their presentations to the committee. This means they have an absolute defence against any defamation action relating to anything they say at the meeting. However, they are expected not to abuse this privilege, and it is my duty as Cathaoirleach to ensure it is not abused. Therefore, if witnesses' statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.
Mr. Hone will be allocated three minutes to deliver the opening statement and that will be followed by a question-and-answer session with members. I invite him to deliver his opening statement.
Mr. Gerry Hone:
I thank the committee for the invitation to appear before it today.
We are grateful for the opportunity to speak about the critically important issue of child poverty and deprivation, its impact on children’s lives and Tusla’s role in responding to that impact in collaboration with our partners. As highlighted by the CSO and the Children’s Rights Alliance, poverty remains a daily lived reality for many children and families in Ireland. Through our work in every community, we see children without reliable access to essentials such as proper housing, healthcare, education and food. Long-term exposure to poverty is strongly linked to poorer outcomes for children, including developmental delay, educational difficulties, health problems, behavioural challenges and experiences of shame and stigma. These challenges have been intensified in recent years by the impact of Covid-19, rising homelessness, increased migration due to conflict and displacement, and systemic discrimination, particularly experienced by Traveller and Roma communities.
While Tusla cannot address the structural causes of poverty, we respond to its consequences every day. Poverty is a significant driver of demand for our services. Since Tusla was established in 2014, child protection and welfare referrals have more than doubled. For the first 11 months of 2025, the agency received 98,122 referrals, an increase of 10% over the preceding year, and we expect the total number of referrals, once validated, for 2025 to be approximately 106,000.
Children living in poverty are disproportionately represented in child welfare and neglect referrals, which together account for 63% of all referrals. These referrals often reflect the relationship between poverty and children living with domestic, sexual and gender-based violence, parental addiction and mental health difficulties, homelessness, and exposure to criminality and exploitation. In the first half of 2025, over 22,500 children received a family support service from Tusla or Tusla-funded providers, representing almost 2% of all children in Ireland.
Children’s rights underpin all of our work, and to this end we work closely with key partners including the Children’s Rights Alliance. Despite increasing pressures, our staff continue to deliver vital services across the country. Some 90% of children in our care are engaged in education, and three quarters of care leavers accessing aftercare are in education or training. Through our reform programme, we are strengthening local service delivery. Since January, we have moved from 17 areas to 30 local networks, designed on the basis of equitable and evidence-informed resource allocation. Integrated local teams now bring together early intervention, family support, and child safety and welfare professionals, providing clearer pathways into support.
Addressing child poverty requires co-ordinated, multi-agency action. Tusla works closely with the HSE, An Garda Síochána, and key Government Departments, including our own, and leads multi-agency collaboration through the children and young people's service committees, CYPSC, our 114 child and family support networks, the area-based childhood programme, and our funding of family resource centres. In total, we fund over 460 organisations nationwide. Continued cross-government commitment, strengthened interagency working and sustained investment are all essential. We welcome the establishment of the child poverty and well-being programme office in the Department of the Taoiseach and we participate in that forum. Additional funding has been secured by Tusla for targeted supports for young parents and disadvantaged families through funding streams such as the European Social Fund, ESF, the children’s fund, and Equal Start funding. We also welcome recent Government initiatives such as the school meals scheme and school book schemes, which are making a tangible difference to children’s daily lives. I thank the committee for its continued commitment to advocating for the most vulnerable children and young people, and we look forward to continuing this work together.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Go raibh maith agat, Mr. Hone. It is proposed to publish the opening statement on the Oireachtas website. Is that agreed? Agreed. Before I call on members, I remind them that they have five minutes each. We have to finish up at noon, so we will strictly adhere to the five minutes if we can. I also remind members to strictly adhere to the topic under consideration at this meeting. I will use the same speaking rota as the first session, but we are going to start with a little swap, so we have Deputy Emer Currie first.
Emer Currie (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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I thank Deputy Charles Ward for swapping with me. I thank Mr. Hone for his opening statement. Dublin West is the constituency I represent and 4,000 homes were built over a five-year period, creating new communities in Hollywoodrath and places like Hansfield and Ongar. Regarding the numbers given by Mr. Hone and the scale of the work, I am feeling it on the ground with families that have growing needs and I think a real sense of the impact of the trauma that comes from poverty and all the reasons for and effects of poverty. It has never been so important to have a multi-agency presence on the ground that is catching children in need and responding to those needs with early intervention. The local community safety partnerships that are being rolled out at the moment are very positive because they involve a community response to all sorts of issues in communities. We know that children can go down the wrong path because of where they have come from and the trauma in their lives. What is the presence really on the ground? How hard is it to reach those growing communities and how do we change that? Given that we are talking about 100,000 child protection and welfare referrals and 50,000 children, we are at a point when more children out there need support. How do we reach them?
Mr. Gerry Hone:
In terms of reaching families on the ground, this is part of the reason we entered into our reform programme within Tusla. We have moved from 17 areas to 30 networks, which actually means we have smaller geographical areas now to control and within each of those areas we have local integrated teams. In each of these new areas we have an integrated front-door team where we have family support services and child welfare and protection services integrated under one roof. In this way, when requests come into the service we can screen them very quickly in terms of need. This screening determines the needs of the family and the child and what needs to happen. We can then identify who is the best person to respond to that need. That is not always within our own agency but we will advocate for services for particular young people with other agencies and work alongside other agencies to make sure those needs are responded to. All of our interventions - be it Meitheal, children in care, the care planning system, our family support plans or our safety plans - engage staff within our own organisation in terms of early intervention and family support. We also engage and fund many community organisations to respond to the support needs of families. Through our processes, such as Meitheal, we already have strong evidence on families that go into that process. We gather the network and the professionals around the child who can help to support that particular child and that family. We make sure the parents get the support they need. Everything is geared towards keeping families together and getting those needs addressed.
Emer Currie (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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How does Tusla prioritise those 30 areas?
Mr. Gerry Hone:
The 30 areas have all been formed on the basis of a resource needs analysis. For the first time in the agency, we have a resource allocation model that looks at the needs. Deprivation is a key part of looking at the resources required for different areas. This determines what level of resource we need to put into those areas. Within our reform programme, we will have dedicated commissioning officers in each of our six regions who will work with area managers. This will be very important because we have to make sure the needs of local families and local communities determine how we shape our services. We have statutory responsibilities and we have to fulfil them. Our priority is always those young people who are at risk of suffering harm. Now, because of the way we are structuring our services, I think families will get faster access to the people who can help them most.
Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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I thank the witnesses for coming before the committee. I want to direct my first questions to Mr. Hone.
The Child Care (Amendment) Bill will bring a greater focus on inter-agency work. That will not just be the case in respect of sharing information. We heard from the Office of the Ombudsman for Children this morning. I am an advocate for Meitheal. I see how well it works. I know these services are voluntary to attend. How can Tusla ensure there is more provision within organisations, including staffing levels? How can we get a commitment from, for example, child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, and people within the local authorities, including the planning offices, to look at the holistic needs of children and their access to playgrounds?
There is a whole thing about insurance. Schools are sitting there and cannot be used in the evenings. They are shut down. Tusla has a role there from a children's rights perspective.
For things such as Meitheal, people should have to attend. I know Tusla cannot make people attend but perhaps we can make provision within the workplace whereby it is part of people's contracts that they have to attend such meetings and take responsibility for saying they are in the best place to be lead practitioner or are in the best place to ensure follow-up. Can anything be done by Tusla or by us on this committee to ensure that responsibilities are divided up and that the child poverty and well-being unit is able to ensure that funding from different Departments is passed down to people?
Mr. Gerry Hone:
Absolutely. In terms of how we respond in our planning for children and families, we are in contact all the time with other agencies. We welcome that there will be a duty to co-operate once the Child Care (Amendment) Bill is introduced. That means we can have some influence on getting around the table the people who are required.
I must say in terms of our operations on the ground that, mostly, we have good co-operation with our statutory partners. We look at how Meitheal initiatives are operating and consider the protocols we have with the HSE. We have a joint protocol that fosters good working relationships at local levels within child and family support networks. I will ask my colleague, Ms Mulvihill, to talk about child and family support networks and how they work because that taps into all the inter-agency work that goes on for children and families.
Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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It is about strengthening the child and family support networks and the CYPSC model. There is room for strengthening there.
Ms Amy Mulvihill:
That is exactly the case. The CYPSC and the child and family support networks work together. Those networks are key at local community level. Within Tusla, we have a significant number of child and family support network co-ordinators and senior co-ordinators who work in the local area to build those relationships, to collaborate and to encourage colleagues across the sectors to engage with Meitheal. That has worked well because at local level, it is about the relationships and then encouraging people and convincing them that engaging with Meitheal will add value to their practice and work.
Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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Under the childcare Act now, there will be more-----
Ms Amy Mulvihill:
The duty to co-operate will definitely help. There is one other piece that I think is important. We are talking about an inter-agency level. At national level, we have worked with the Department of children and under the Equal Start programme to allow early years practitioners to be trained and to be given time in the tier 1 and tier 2 early years services to be released to attend Meitheal training. The early years practitioners can also attend, and potentially lead, Meitheal.
Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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Is there an obligation on schools to attend Meitheal briefings?
Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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I know child and family support network co-ordinators who have tried very hard to bring it out to communities. Perhaps there could be more obligations on services. It is about looking at how the child poverty and well-being unit can ensure this is part of every Department. If we are looking at eradicating poverty, we need it to be a central part of each Department from a training point of view and also to allow engagement and the sharing of information.
Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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Ms Mulvihill mentioned education support services, or perhaps it was Ms O'Keeffe. School refusal is a huge thing. We all know the rates of school refusal. Are there any plans to expand school completion or the home youth liaison service to all schools? We need talk therapy support within schools for young people.
Ms Áine O'Keeffe:
A new DEIS plan is about to be published. I expect the Department of Education and Youth will be publishing it in the coming weeks. We now have 550 home school community liaison co-ordinators, operating across all DEIS schools and non-DEIS schools with high levels of Traveller enrolment. All of those home school community liaison co-ordinators have accessed training and do it. They are regular leads on Meitheal. I see Meitheal being used on an ongoing basis by those practitioners within our schools. They are getting results, and that has built the profile of Meitheal and commitment to it. That is positive.
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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The reform programme sounds progressive. There is the move from 17 to 30 local networks. I imagine they are geographically based.
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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There is a move to 30 local networks.
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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That requires, I imagine, a significant increase in resources.
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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Is there a standard staffing cohort for each of the 30 locations?
Mr. Gerry Hone:
In terms of the resource allocation model and how we have divided up the geography, within each network will be a local integrated team for your front door, which has two child welfare protection teams and one family support team. Then you have another two local integrated teams, each of which have three sub-teams around child protection, children in care and family support. In total, across the 30 networks, the big change is standing up 90 family support teams across the country. We have created a family support process and pathway on our client information system, which is completely new. We have one record now for child protection, child welfare and family support on our system.
We are always challenged in respect of resources. We looked at our resource allocation model. Today, we have 1,728 social workers out there, or 1,754 if we add agency staff, as well as 1,422 social care staff. We have divided them equitably according to the need across our services.
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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One of the things Mr. Hone noted in response to an earlier question was that in areas where Tusla thinks there might be greater need, resources have been stepped up further. Am I right in saying that?
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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Is it that the geographical area is smaller?
Mr. Gerry Hone:
Yes. What we have done there is that we have worked out the minimum requirement for us to deliver a service within those areas. A resource allocation model also looks at the number of staff required to provide the optimum service. There is a gap. We have seen an increase in the rates of referrals into the agency. They are growing all the time. There is constantly a need for more resources. The Department has been very supportive in the Estimates process in getting extra resources into the agency. However, increased investment is still needed. We have never had such a demand on our services as we have today.
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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Has Tusla been successful in staffing all those positions?
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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That is very positive, I feel.
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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It sounds very positive. What is the difference between a family support service and a social work intervention?
Mr. Cormac Quinlan:
They are not completely indivisible. Most of our work, in reality, is family support. Even in a child protection and welfare intervention, you are still trying to support the family to deal with complex issues. Typically how we divide it is that family support occurs where a child has a particular need. That arises in cases where we are not concerned about abuse or neglect of the child but all agree that a parent or someone needs help and wants support, and we want to intervene early.
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I am sorry to interrupt, but I have a lot of questions and my time is limited. In terms of the response of families to that support, do the witnesses find it is universally welcomed?
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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If people hear that Tusla's family support service has been proposed to a family, is there any sense that it is putting them in a position whereby they might be held liable or culpable for how they are treating people?
Mr. Cormac Quinlan:
No. We are very clear when we intervene in families' lives why and how we are intervening so families should be very clear about that.
We spent a lot of time in communities through our commission service and promoting the work we do in family support. That is an important point. We want people to see Tusla as an agency that is there to support families, not just as a child protection welfare service.
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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One of the things I noticed that if we take an average of 100,000 over the past couple of years that only 22,839 cases were open to social work at the end of 2024. That is one in four referrals still open to social work. Would it be wrong to say that is low? The concern I have is about the threshold that Tusla might be deciding whether social work intervention is needed here or not and due to stretched resources it might decide that it cannot be provided there.
Mr. Gerry Hone:
What we need to add to that figure is that in the first half of last year, for example, there were 22,500 young children in receipt of a family support service on top of what is open to the social work service. We should never look at the social work figures in isolation because the social work intervention is around harm and safety and that-----
John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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That is not in any way being neglected.
Charles Ward (Donegal, 100% Redress Party)
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I thank the witnesses for being here. I will briefly get into it because I am aware of my time. Tusla is a statutory agency responsible for child welfare but in my constituency of Donegal, we have a humanitarian crisis, a child poverty crisis and a defective concrete crisis going on. What assessment has Tusla carried out on the impact of concrete homes on children's quality of life, including the anxiety, stress, poverty, educational outcomes and sleep deprivation that are currently going on? Despite this, these children are classed as living in homes that are structurally unsound and unsafe. I will hand that over to Mr. Hone.
Mr. Gerry Hone:
I thank Deputy Ward. As he is aware, I am well aware of that situation in County Donegal. I am an affected homeowner in terms of defective concrete. I know for a fact in Donegal we work very closely with the Inishowen Development Partnership and Inishowen Family Action Network, IFAN. Tusla has funded them to undertake research work with families who are affected and how they are affected. There is a strong system of meitheal in Donegal. It is probably one of the areas in the country where child and family support networks are well developed. Inishowen and Letterkenny are examples of where groups of service providers are meeting together within child and family support networks to talk about need.
I absolutely agree about the impact of defective concrete on children when they are living in unsafe structures. We all want our children to feel safe. That is a basic must for our children. When they do not feel that, it is horrific. For example, in Donegal and other countries, people are going from affected homes to affected schools to affected health centres to affected libraries. I have advocated with the Ombudsman personally to highlight this as a need for the Government to address. There is a scheme to support families. I am still very concerned that accessibility to that scheme is limited to those who can afford it. That is wrong. We can just give our commitment to advocate for those young people.
When we get involved with a child and family, we carry out a full assessment of what the actual needs are. We develop a plan to respond to those needs. Does Ms Mulvihill wish to add anything around the child and family support networks, CFSNs, and how they achieve that? That might be useful.
Ms Amy Mulvihill:
The child and family support networks come together to address needs in a specific area. I am aware of that CFSN work that is going on in relation to the concrete issues. Where issues are emerging for a particular area or if there is a crisis or something like that, all the members come together. With the Creeslough incident as well, all the services in the children and family services came together specifically to work on that. They then come together to plan how to support those families. There are broad issues for the entire community and then there are specific issues. They lead that to ensure that wraparound supports are provided a community level.
Charles Ward (Donegal, 100% Redress Party)
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That is fine. I thank Mr. Hone and Ms Mulvihill.
Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the witnesses for coming in this morning and for their opening statement. I wish to focus on two areas where I believe Tusla has an active role in avoiding poverty in the first instance. It reminded me of the inquest last November of a young person who was approaching his 18th birthday and had said he was concerned about ending up in homelessness. He still had no aftercare plan in place. One of the jury recommendations to Tusla was that the aftercare plan would be put in place on a child's 17th birthday. That is a good practice and should be in place. I wish to ask about this, not to focus on that inquest, but on that recommendation specifically in terms of the aftercare and putting it in place at 17 years old so children and young people are not worried about facing into poverty deprivation or homelessness. That is one action that we can take that can potentially avoid poverty and deprivation.
Mr. Gerry Hone:
I agree entirely. There is a need for a multidisciplinary plan. We try to achieve that and begin talking about leaving care when a young person is 16 years old. It is important to begin those discussions early because, as we all know, these are a very vulnerable group. They are challenged even further by the housing crisis that we are facing today and accessing employment and accommodation and trying to become independent at a young age. When we look at the average child in society as to when they leave home and what supports they get, we are talking about probably 26 years old for girls and 28 years old for boys. It is much further down the road. Tusla is very conscious of that and that we have systems in place to support children right up to their 23rd or 24th birthday. We take that responsibility very seriously. The steering groups for young people who are leaving care are meant to be multidisciplinary. It is not just about Tusla. It is about housing, local authorities, getting people social protection, getting people around the table, helping them with their benefits and creating resilience for those young people to stand on their own two feet.
Another thing that is so important is that we have a lot of children in our care system who have a disability of one type or another. Our co-operation with the HSE through the joint protocol is important to get supported placements for young people who require it. Those plans are key in making that work.
Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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In the case of this young person, that conversation did not start at 16 years old. I would welcome if the witnesses can provide us some figures in terms of the aftercare plan and if Tusla are meeting that recommendation from the jury in terms of the age of 17. That would an important way in which we can avoid poverty and deprivation.
Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Mr. Hone. Another way and another key role Tusla plays is the roll-out of funding and the support for family resource centres, which do incredible work with lifting children, families and people of all ages out of poverty deprivation while supporting them in various times of their lives. Tusla will soon be announcing the further ten centres, which is extremely welcome. I welcome that Government move and proposal. On that ten, there will be no doubt a lot of demand. When will that announcement be made?
Ballinasloe in my constituency is one that is seeking to be one of those ten. According to Pobal, it has areas of extreme disadvantage. In fact, in the urban area of Ballinasloe, which is the county town of Galway, it is the most extremely disadvantaged area in the entire State. To me, it has to be one of the ten. The resource centre is not too long up and running. However, given the Pobal index and I presume that is what Tusla will be looking at in terms of the decision, when will see those ten come into the funding stream?
Mr. Gerry Hone:
I agree with the Deputy that family resource centres, FRCs, are key in terms of the support and fabric of local communities and being real hubs of family support for children and families. I will refer the Deputy to Mr. Williams who is in charge of the FRC programme and who will be able to answer the question better than I can.
Mr. Eifion Williams:
We developed five last year. Those five are up and running now and working very well. Through that same process, we have identified the ten. I cannot announce it here because it is with the Minister. The Minister will make an announcement shortly on the ten.
We got a huge response in terms of the applications from organisations. We looked at the deprivation index. We looked at the areas and our network structure. At this point, we have an FRC in every one of those networks bar one, which we are working on with the new ten centres coming in. Some networks have three FRCs in them, which is ideal, and they are hubs for community development and community support and we all value that work. We are anticipating that this announcement will be soon. They are all organisations that are primed and ready to go, so we will be ready with the funding and ready to support them. Those organisations that did not make it over the line, we will be working with those communities in case there is another round of funding to develop more family resource centres.
Aisling Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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I want to clarify something that Mr. Hone said in his opening statement about how Tusla responds to the consequences of poverty rather than addressing the structural causes. I respectfully disagree with that in that poverty and deprivation are cycles, a bit like addiction is a cycle. Deprivation begets deprivation. If Tusla sees a young teenager heading down that path, the children who come after her are, unfortunately, quite likely to go down that path without the right intervention.
No one would argue that early intervention, education and prevention are all key, but what specifically is Tusla's role in early intervention? What new measures is Tusla doing with families in that case?
Mr. Gerry Hone:
I thank the Deputy for her questions. Speaking to our reform programme in terms of what we are trying to do in that space, when families come looking for help or they are referred to us by another agency, we will work with those families in terms of the identification of need and what they need in terms of making their lives better, improving the welfare of the child, improving the capacity of families to give good care to their children and supporting parents who actually require that support. Our new system will target what outcomes we are trying to achieve with those families and we will hold ourselves to account and hold other agencies that we fund to account for actually meeting those targets and getting those outcomes. If we cannot reach them, we have to understand why we cannot reach them and we have to try something else. There is much greater accountability coming down the tracks with reform where we can actually have much better data around family support and what the needs of local communities out there are as highlighted. We will be able to report on that. We actually spend €181 million per annum on funded services. Up until now, our tracking systems have been quite hit and miss with those because those particular families have not been on our client record system. Now they are and now there will be a clear set of outcomes for working with those families. Rightfully, as an agency, we will be able to show much greater accountability about the effectiveness of that.
Ms Amy Mulvihill:
In addition to what Mr. Hone said in terms of what we are doing to address intergenerational poverty and address those issues, there are structural issues that are not Tusla's responsibility alone. In the last number of years, and we are talking in general terms, we have the area-based childhood programme which is 12 sites that are specifically for areas of extreme disadvantage. We have also, with the Department of children's support, expanded the young parents support programme from 11 to 17 sites to try to address that. In the last couple of years, we have started the roll-out of the national home visiting programme, which is funded through the children's fund. The decisions around where the home visiting sites would be established were based on the Pobal deprivation index as well. We focused on extremely disadvantaged and very disadvantaged areas. We have done other work through the equal start programme, early talk boost and early childhood and infant mental health, which again are to address that intergenerational poverty. We have that universal work we are doing across our networks but we are also developing a number of targeted supports as well, which are to address poverty and deprivation.
Aisling Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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Tusla's new team, the children missing in education team, is obviously in response to some very sad cases that we have had over the last number of years. What is the composition of that team? What additional protocols has Tusla brought in to date? What are the outcomes so far?
Ms Áine O'Keeffe:
It is really important to say that the children missing in education team is not a new business process within our service. We have always had a children missing in education standard business process. We have colleagues in Northern Ireland and in the UK with similar teams. It is also important to say that a child missing in education is not a missing a child. They are children who are maybe moving from education setting to another. In the past, there would have been regionalised teams that followed up where we were made aware of a child who had moved school and had not turned up somewhere else in the jurisdiction or in a school across the Border.
What the children missing in education team did in 2025 was put in two dedicated educational welfare officers where we reviewed our standard business processes and developed a standard operating procedure that really strengthened the service with learnings from some very recent tragic cases, and years of implementation also strengthened how we go about that. It is a central team so that I can be really clear on its effectiveness. We have had 755 cases that have been referred to us since July. We have closed somewhere in the region of 615 of those and the other 140 are being worked through as we speak by the team. It is that additional layer of assurance for me at the moment that we are able to fill those gaps where they arise and identify where children should be. Once we have reviewed, this new team will determine whether it should stay national or we should bring that standard operating procedure back out to all of our educational welfare officers, EWOs, in the region. That is something I will think about later this year when we see how that team is going.
Margaret Murphy O'Mahony (Fianna Fail)
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I apologise that I have to go in and out because I am attending the Seanad as well. I also apologise if anything I ask has been covered already. The Chair can move me on and I can look back on it. I welcome the witnesses here today. The elephant in the room is that sometimes Tusla sometimes gets bad press, but I acknowledge the very good work the agency does. I always say that the people who work for Tusla are all human as well and obviously they are doing their best in sometimes very hard circumstances. I wanted to acknowledge that today.
The witnesses acknowledged Government initiatives such as the school meals and free schoolbooks. What else would they like to see? If they had a magic wand, are there one or two other things they would like to see happen?
Mr. Gerry Hone:
Anything that can actually support families struggling with poverty. I think there have been some great developments, including the apprenticeships that have been development nationally and the access to employment initiatives. We have, for example, a very good scheme for leaving after care workers in terms of a way to work. That is a project that we fund to help young people leaving care into employment. The roll-out of programmes like that are very progressive in helping people get a good start in life. That is a really important issue for our leaving after care workers. We have some good forums working at the moment. Within the Department of Children, Disability and Equality we have a family support group that looks at family support across the spectrum of all our services and we have a vulnerable children's group that I participate in that looks at the most vulnerable children in society in terms of who needs help most and what we can do better to support those particular children. The answer, for me, lies in every time we can sit down together across agencies and talk about the needs of families, local communities and children and respond practically to the needs we are identifying. That in itself will actually result in structural change further down the road. We need to be led by the needs of families and children, and our services need to be shaped accordingly, and the staff that we provide to respond to those needs should be trained based on the needs that we are facing.
That sounds easy but it is actually very difficult to achieve. That is our direction of travel. That will lead to a lot of positive structural change further down the road.
Margaret Murphy O'Mahony (Fianna Fail)
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Mr. Hone also highlights strong inter-agency work, for example, with the HSE. To bring it to interdepartmental co-ordination, where would Tusla like to see that going?
Mr. Cormac Quinlan:
There is a couple of things we touch on. We currently have the Children First interdepartmental group. That meets on an ongoing basis across government in relation to obligations under Children First, which is an important forum for helping everyone understand their obligations to children because everyone in society has an obligation to protect children.
Under the Child Care Act amendment, there will be an implementation group, again cross-government, that will also support how we will implement those provisions, particularly when it comes to issues, such as the duty to co-operate, which will be central towards integrated services.
Under the Taoiseach's child well-being and poverty unit, we are part of the child poverty network. We are there as well. We have been informing, and bringing our best thinking to that work too, including bringing examples of complex cases to that forum and to child poverty summits. We have been supporting, looking at how they might develop some thinking across agencies and sectors around more integrated working and self-assessment tools that might support that.
All of those kind of provisions support, certainly from a cross-government perspective, how we will work together to deliver on the best outcomes for children.
Margaret Murphy O'Mahony (Fianna Fail)
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I thank Mr. Quinlan and Mr. Hone.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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The broadcasting unit is having a slight issue with microphones. If members can make sure to turn on their own microphone, that would help.
We are getting slightly tight on time. If everybody can stick to their five minutes, we will definitely get to everybody and be out on time for 12 o'clock. I call Senator Keogan.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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I thank Mr. Hone for coming here this morning. In his opening statement, he said: "Poverty is a significant driver of demand for our services." Tusla's statement links child poverty directly to increased referrals. However, the Child Law Project report, "Falling Through the Cracks", documents that once children enter the system, system failures often compound harm, including cases where children are left months or years without an allocated social workers and very young children experience multiple placement changes in a matter of weeks. How does Tusla reconcile this position that poverty drives referrals with the evidence that entry into the system in its current state can intensify instability and harm rather than reduce it? Children are falling through the cracks because of the failure of Tusla and its inability to act quickly in some of these cases. Can Mr. Hone outline the agency's position there?
Mr. Gerry Hone:
When you look at the demand on our services, how it has increased over recent years and the resources that we require to do our job well, some of the problems that the Child Law Project raises were really around having sufficient resources around allocation of cases to make sure that assessments are carried out and needs are met. We have seen great improvements in our staffing rates over recent years and for the first time, the agency is fully staffed in terms of its complement. We continue to struggle to provide adequate numbers of placements for young people who require it in our system but within our reform strategy, there are clear plans to increase the number of placements we have in our residential services. However, demand is growing all the time. Any case that is unallocated today, we have a national unallocated case's policy where those cases are continually examined in terms of any extra information that has come in, but our triage system and assessment systems for those cases always ensure that those young people who need help most actually get that help. Therefore, we are in a better position today. We absolutely need more resources to meet the demand on our services out there. We are constantly advocating - our Department, to be fair, is constantly advocating - for the additional resources that we need to complete the complicated task that we have.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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That sounds all lovely but the Child Law Project would say something totally different. Even Mr. Hone's opening statement states, "Through our reform programme, we are strengthening local service delivery .... [and integrated] pathways into support", but the Child Law Project includes numerous incidents where judges have re-entered a case solely because Tusla had not acted. They shortened interim care orders to force progress in certain cases and criticised the lack of lawful placements for social work oversight. Given that these failures occurred under Tusla's existing powers, can Mr. Hone explain how reform or expanded preventative pathways risk bringing more children into the system, the capacity constraints of which have been repeatedly highlighted by the courts?
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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I started reading some of those the other night. I found it quite harrowing where the system and Tusla was failing those children and the families.
Mr. Gerry Hone:
To be fair, within that report there were also positives in what was being described in terms of Tusla intervention. The Senator will see one of those reports of the young child who was in foster care who did extremely well. When we go into the court arena and we are applying for care orders or interim care orders for young people, that is about the most draconian step we can take in going to court to remove a child from their family. We only do that when we are absolutely assured that we have tried everything within our powers in terms of early intervention, family support and working with other agencies. All of those young people have a care plan when they are in our care system. Those care plans are not just about our intervention in terms of what we are doing. It is about other inter-agency support to the families. All of our plans engage extra supports. I am confident that the delivery and targeting of our family support services in a better way will help families better and lead to better outcomes for those children.
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I apologise for running between committee meetings this morning.
I thank the witnesses for being here. It is great to have an opportunity to speak with them all again on the topic of poverty and deprivation. I am curious from my own professional experience about the nature of the thresholds when referrals are received. How often would poverty manifest itself or be analysed? Mr. Hone stated that the majority of the referrals to the organisation are welfare concerns. Would Mr. Hone classify much of that as being related to poverty?
Mr. Gerry Hone:
In terms of the referrals that come in, approximately 63% of them are welfare concerns, and related to neglect as well. We have ways of assessing that.
I will hand over to Mr. Quinlan here. He is our lead on development practice within the organisation and how we assess those particular needs.
Mr. Cormac Quinlan:
The Deputy asked how we pick up on poverty. When we are looking at any situation that is referred to us of a child protection or welfare nature, particularly when we are concerned about harm to a child, what we will commonly see - this was touched on in the Child Law Project report as well so it is probably relevant here - is a predominance of what we generally refer to as quite serious complicating factors in the family, for instance, drug and alcohol misuse on the part of a parent. That can often arise because a parent is struggling living in poor accommodation or poor housing. We will see domestic violence as a key issue as well on that. It is something that can be intergenerational and there can be an impact of poverty in that context as well. We will also see parental mental health issues appear there. They can suffer it because people have low income or are living in situations of stress or poverty.
We will see the dominance of those complicating factors in situations, and they are the factors that are more likely to cause harm to a child. So, when we are trying to assess safety for children, we are also looking at the positives and good things in a family situation, but one will see in all of our assessments strong reference to those issues. That is picked up in the child care law report. If you read those reports, you will see numerous cases where parents are presenting with those difficulties, which are clearly impacting on their ability to keep children safe. That plays into the piece around the whole interagency responsibility because the more other sectors pay attention to how their interventions, whether for adult mental health, domestic violence or drugs, are also focused on how we improve children's outcomes in that space, in that they are not just supporting the adults, but the family as a whole, the more that supports our collective work and how we address harm and future danger to children in that context. We are always assessing those factors in the context of any referral coming to us.
Obviously, if there is not harm, there may still be the presence of those factors and that is where we are trying to divert families into more family support services where they can get those supports. This is where we try to co-ordinate those services, such as the Meitheal model, on behalf of the family. We may appoint a lead practitioner who will try to work with those other service areas to try to address those longer term issues.
When it is child protection and welfare, we are doing the same thing. We are trying to get other professionals around the table to support how we might help the parent who has a drug or alcohol problem, but we are also paying attention to the fact that we need to keep the child safe today, tomorrow and the next day, even though there might be a drug or alcohol issue at play, and to who else can be involved with us to support from the wider network and other supports who can help keep the child safe today, tomorrow and the next day while we work with the parent to address an alcohol or drug issue.
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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On reflection, there is probably no organisation better placed to identify trends or to have that really thorough analysis of the daily lived experience of children and young people with such challenging life experiences. Meitheal was mentioned. As a practitioner, I experienced it in its very early days. Even then, one could see the phenomenal potential for this as a mechanism. It is great to see it having such an impact.
Does Mr. Hone think Tusla is adequately resourced? He will of course say it is, but does he think it has opportunity enough? Quite often, we jump to specific supports for individuals, which is meritable and has to happen. That is Tusla's primary concern. However, with regard to the opportunity to develop an analysis and insight into the collective experience of children and young people in Ireland, does Tusla get to champion that or advocate for that or influence policy to the extent that it is required in a more collective space as opposed to looking at the individual? Is there more we could do to empower Tusla as an organisation to show overall that this is actually where we are going as opposed to individual issues?
Mr. Gerry Hone:
Yes. We have various interdepartmental forums, which Mr. Quinlan has already described, for working with Departments to raise the issues we are meeting. A day in the life of a child is very important to us in all the cases that we look at, given their lived experience and the impact on them. We can collate that information and bring it into those interdepartmental forums. We need to get better, though. I am talking particularly about our family support services being under reform, about being able to report better on the data and what that experience is telling us, and about bringing that into the interdepartmental forums. One of the key reasons for our reform programme is so that we can use good data to inform the systems, the Department and bodies like the family support forum within the Department about what is required, with our Department then operating across Departments to make sure that message is actually heard. The reform programme will certainly improve our ability to do that at Government level.
Mike Kennelly (Fine Gael)
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I apologise, as I am over and back to the Seanad. Some of my observations and questions have probably been addressed already.
First of all, I congratulate the witnesses on the work that Tusla does. They are a team, and when a team is performing well, things go pretty well, but when they go wrong, we criticise. That is why we are on this committee, but we also congratulate on the good efforts as well. I just wanted to put that on record.
Mike Kennelly (Fine Gael)
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I will touch on the biggest obstacle we have. I was going through the report last night. There were 106,000 referrals in 2025. No team works up to 100% if there is someone breaking down or if there is some section in that team not doing its job. Maybe it is not resourced enough, which was mentioned already. These figures show an upward trend since 2014. Do we have adequate staff levels going forward to meet this? Is there a target? Preferably, the number of referrals stays below 106,000 so that the staff and Mr. Hone's team can accommodate them.
A referral figure of 106,000 is quite remarkable. Are there peaks and troughs in the year when kids are coming to Tusla's attention? Is it during the winter or is it during school times? Is there a time in the year when there are more referrals than usual and do we have enough staff during that time?
Mr. Hone mentioned that the Tusla reform programme had gone from 17 to 30 local networks. Where are those local networks? Are they spread evenly across the country? Obviously, there are some troughs and peaks and perhaps the number of referrals is higher in cities. If a person presents themself as a referral to Tulsa tomorrow morning in the backbone of north Kerry or west Limerick, are these services available to kids in these remote areas or do they have to travel? Early assessment, in any form of life, is a cure for a lot of the problems children in disadvantaged areas are facing.
Mr. Gerry Hone:
The Senator asked if there was a time of year when we were busier than another. The answer to that is "Not really". The need out there is constant and the referrals are constant. There is no particular data we have that would say one time of year is busier than another. It is busy all the time in this job. I am busy, but I am very proud of the work that is done daily by our staff out there across our systems.
The Senator asked about the 30 new networks. Before we went into the reform programme, we had six regions and 17 areas, but there was a huge disparity in population, need and referral rates. There was not equity in how those regions or areas were set up. The 30 networks have been set up so that there is an almost equal population of children within their areas. We have also taken into account the deprivation indices. We have taken into account geography. If a person is in Kerry or Donegal, completing a home visit can take a couple hours to get to people, which may not be the case in a more urban setting, but as best we can, we have taken all those things into account. We have to move towards more equitable distribution of staff. Having having created the 30 networks, those are smaller populations, so we can look at the critical need in each of those networks. Going forward, our workforce planning can make sure that we are delivering the resources equitably across our system.
This is the beginning of a journey for us but we have already identified the critical minimum need in a place like Kerry of what it means to give a decent service to local children and families. We want it to be the case, no matter what part of the country a person is in, that when he or she comes in, there is a good assessment of needs straight away and we get families quickly to the help they require. There is current disparity even in what we commission around the country and what we spend on that. Going forward, we have dedicated commissioning officers.
Mike Kennelly (Fine Gael)
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Is there an average time from referral to meeting with the families?
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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The Senator's time is up. We will move to Deputy Ruairí Ó Murchú.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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In his statement, Mr. Hone said: "These referrals often reflect the relationship between poverty and children living with domestic, sexual and gender-based violence, parental addiction and mental health difficulties, homelessness, and exposure to criminality and exploitation."
We have dealt with this before and on some level, it is the same conversation. The Child Law Project showed up those particularly complex issues again. Mr. Hone gave out numbers at one stage, which I think were 1,754 social workers. The Child Law Project, alongside a number of harrowing cases, at times spoke about the insufficient number of social workers. He spoke about ensuring we have the minimum essential. Where are we precisely and where are the deficiencies at this point? I get that in a perfect world you could be looking for three times that amount. I cannot imagine the need out there.
Mr. Gerry Hone:
What I think is positive about the Child Law Project and its findings is that it gives us an opportunity to look at that as learning and being able to improve on our services, which is really important. The Child Law Project gives you and the public insight into what happens in the courtroom where you have cases that are usually in camera. The learning that comes from the Child Law Project is important to us in terms of taking those reports, looking at them and going forward, learning from the good, the bad and the indifferent of what is working well and what is not working so well in those forums. The reform programme has allowed us to focus on the actual resource we think is required to deliver a good service. On numbers, we think we are short approximately 300 social workers in the system in order to meet the rise in need out there. This is a year-on-year analysis for us of how good we are, or what level of resource we need to respond to the emerging need. The Deputy will know that the demand from separated children seeking international protection is huge. That almost takes up the resources of an additional region at this stage in terms of demand on our service.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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I get that. That is 300 social workers. Is there anything else on social care workers? I get that they are cutting their cloth to measure.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Are those positions sanctioned and not filled, or how are they?
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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The positions are completely filled but they are at least 400 short on what is needed to deliver.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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That is before, because we are talking about screening, making an assessment of those necessary and substantial long-term interventions, and that they have the capacity to deal with those more complex cases Mr. Hone spoke about. Will he also talk about that complex new model of care as well? He mentioned it in his previous scenario. How is that being operated at the minute, given that they do not have the resources they would like to have?
Mr. Gerry Hone:
What we have to do all the time with the resources we have is make sure they are targeted at those families that need it most. That is what we do. There is a cohort of children we have spoken about before, who tend to fall between the cracks of different agencies. We have a group meeting nationally. These are stakeholders from across our partner agencies in health and the Garda, to look at a model of care, maybe within our residential centres that will respond better to the needs of these young people using a multi-agency model. This has come up in our special care services.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Is that combined with the appropriate places?
Mr. Gerry Hone:
Yes and having the appropriate places there. This links into research commissioned as part of our examination of special care and the expert group on special care that looked in to say we need a different model to make sure the needs of these young people are met. No one agency can do this on its own. It has got-----
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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It has got to be worked on.
Mr. Gerry Hone:
It has got to be worked on together across agencies. We hope we would have a model of care we can use within our residential centres agreed within the first half of this year, using the various pieces of research ongoing, the support of the Department, the various groups that meet within the Department, particularly the vulnerable children's group, and the research going on within special care to help us develop a model that will better meet the needs of those complex cases.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I will probably not take the full five minutes, and we will get out at 12 noon. I turn to the 599 children in residential care. We were speaking earlier with the Office of the Ombudsman and talking about the importance of extracurricular activities and accessing appropriate play spaces. These are some of the findings they are discovering as well. There is not that safe playground to go to, or sufficient toys or space. In relation to the disability centres and the other detention centres, supported lodgings or special emergency arrangements, I understand there might be older or younger kids. Are there minimum standards of access to play or appropriate extracurricular activities or space?
Mr. Gerry Hone:
We have an assessment of need for all the children we deal with. That looks at global needs in terms of what they require in the areas of recreation, health and recreation. It is important that there is a plan under each of the needs identified to help young people access the services they need to lead a healthy life. Under the reform programme, we have set up an outcomes framework linked to five national outcomes for children and young people nationally. We will benchmark ourselves and our services against those national outcomes. If people are healthy they need access to recreation. They need access to parks. We spoke about our need for multi-agency engagement to respond to these needs. We need local councils at the table to make sure the right services are available in our localities and to make sure children have access to that. That is the kind of activity that leads to structural change. Ms Mulvihill might comment on some of the family support projects we have that contribute to that.
Ms Amy Mulvihill:
We do work at local level as well. Once example is my place to play initiative. We have got funding in. We worked with CYPSC for families in homeless accommodation or congregated settings where if there are developmental issues for younger children in particular, they do not have the facilities to get out. In the my place to play initiative, there are playmats where parents are trained to develop their children's development and motor skills. At community level we escalate issues to CYPSC, which in theory will be escalated at council level to identify those needs for recreation facilities as well.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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We have a small bit of time left and I have a question for Mr. Quinlan about the working poor, that is, the new people who may be at risk of poverty or deprivation and welfare. I think Mr. Quinlan talked about Tusla appearing at the door in a family support network and it wants to be seen as a supportive agency rather than just child protection. I am conscious of the constituents starting to come into my office who are at the approximately €34,000 income bracket. They are just above social housing and under affordable housing. They have never been in this space before. I am thinking about families who are starting to fall into that vulnerable category who probably never expected to see themselves like that. Are we thinking about rolling out anything where you can reach out to Tusla to engage in some form of support before it gets to a point? We saw that the Garda and teachers are some of the biggest referrers. Have we have any scope for families to say they are struggling and do not want to fall into issues with welfare?
Mr. Cormac Quinlan:
We do a lot of promotion to try to encourage people to come forward. That is where FRCs and local supports are important spaces.
It can be hard to pick up the phone and ring Tusla. We understand that. Due to the nature of some of the work that we do, people sometimes struggle with that. Therefore, accessing local services that we fund is sometimes a good starting point for people because there is perhaps less shame or stigma associated with accessing those services, as they are generally available in the community. People can walk up to a family resource centre, FRC, and access support and help without that, but we would always encourage people if they feel they need that additional support that our front door might be able to tailor for. We would always encourage people to do that. We are continuously involved in communications right across all of the areas. Through the reform work, there will be further work done on communicating the changes we have made and how to access the services. We will be promoting some of that change and encouraging people who to think about, where they need help, how best to access it. What we want to make sure is that we get the right response for people at the right time and not to assume that Tusla is just there for child protection and welfare. It is also there to support families in need.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I thank Mr. Quinlan so much. I thank all of our Deputies and Senators for being nice and timely this morning and for the very good engagement we have had. This is such an important topic. We encourage everyone to continue doing their very best. The joint committee now stands adjourned until Thursday, 29 January 2025 at 9.30 a.m.