Liam Twomey (Wexford, Fine Gael)

I support this important legislation. We should take this opportunity to give credit to foster parents. They are a unique group of people in Irish society. Not everybody would or could do the work they do. They care for children in loco parentis. It is a difficult role because many of these children have difficulties, including behavioural difficulties. It is interesting that there are 5,000 children in care. There are more children in the care of the HSE than are attending primary schools in my constituency of County Wexford at present. That is a dramatic number. We seldom acknowledge the huge number of children in care.

Social workers should also see their role and ethos praised. There has been much criticism of some of the people who work in the HSE and social workers often bear the brunt of that criticism with regard to the care of children. There is a need to reinforce the ethos of social workers, which must also be in loco parentis. They see many terrible things and the difficulties that occur in families. Like all of us in the House, they can get despondent and despair that any of the problems can be corrected. People lose the will to do their job in the way they have been trained to do it. It is important to give credit to social workers; their job is extremely difficult. I hope they maintain the important ethos that what they do must be in the best interests of the child.

My main criticism of this legislation is the five year rule. Five years is too long. Two or three years should be more than enough. I am not sure why the Minister decided on a five year period. If a child is going to bond with his or her foster parents, it will usually happen relatively quickly. It would be a mark of respect both to the child and the foster parent if that period were shortened. That would better serve the interests of the children involved. Perhaps the Minister would explain why he decided on the relatively long period of five years before the foster parent can take care of a child as if it was his or her own. When the bonding process works well, it can happen over the course of a few months. It would be a mark of respect for both sides if we passed legislation that would acknowledge the bonding of the child and foster parent by permitting the extra responsibilities in a shorter duration of time. The period should be between two and three years.

I commend the Minister on his hard work. The Minister of State is obviously extremely dedicated to the job he does and puts a good deal of effort into the legislation he has been working on since he was given special responsibility for children. When one reflects on the hard work he must be doing behind the scenes in terms of trying to get this type of legislation right so that it will endure for the future, one concludes that it takes up a great deal of personal time, quite apart from his work time. Often very little credit is given to Members of this House who work hard on what they were elected to do, namely, formulate legislation and get it through the Oireachtas. While a certain amount of work is done on this side of the House, I acknowledge that it is probably easier for us to go through a piece of legislation with a view to exposing its problems. However, that is what democracy is about.

My concern about this Bill is similar to the position I hold on other Ministers, namely, the lack of legislation in this area. When one reflects on the whole Leas Cross debate in terms of protecting elderly people, it was not as if many of these problems were not known about or were unmentioned in numerous Government documents. There has been talk about protecting the elderly with an expanded social services inspectorate. While the Government is looking at HIQA legislation, I believe a different approach should be taken. Even on funding for the elderly for the future, all such concerns formed key arguments in Government documents as far back as 2001. Yet nothing has been done about the protection of elderly patients in the last five years. To me it was amazing to find out yesterday that two years since its establishment the reforming HSE, which is supposed to make the health service better, still does not have full regulations in place to operate a complaints procedure. Even its corporate governance was not signed off until recently.

I hope that does not happen in this regard. I shall really commend the Minister of State if he brings forward changes to the legislation on Committee Stage which are based on the recommendations made in the Ferns Report. I give credit to him, nonetheless, in so far as he is attempting to bring such matters forward quickly. Far too many Ministers are sitting on reports four or five years old which make recommendations to change legislation, while they come out with glib responses and soundbites for the media. They are not doing the hard work they need to do, and are not delivering on legislation. When this Bill is being debated on Committee Stage, I hope the Minister of State will bring forward good solid commitments to protect children in our society on the basis of the Ferns Report recommendations, because of the enormous number of scandals to do with children in recent years. In the event, we will give the Minister of State all the support he needs. I hope he will fight, too, from within Government, to get the social services inspectorate properly up and running — to get the Ministers concerned to do what they are supposed to do. It is not a matter of opening off-licences or glad-handing around the country, rather it is about getting appropriate legislation though the Oireachtas.

The Leas Cross scandal would never have happened if the former Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Martin, had been more awake regarding his job. That is definitely true. Those types of nursing homes would have been closed long ago. He would not have destroyed the reputations of an enormous number of nursing homes throughout the country if he had been doing his job, instead of posing as a glamour boy for the media. The HSE is not without its imperfections, as has been discerned over the last 20 months. The Minister of State said the onus was on the HSE to provide the necessary supports for carers. It is extremely important to know what precisely the HSE is doing to give supports to carers and people who are vulnerable. The dead hand of officialdom is demoralising social workers and everybody in the health service. In a recent case, when a carer looking after children with intellectual disabilities implied to the HSE that he might do something criminal, its response was equivalent to that of a squad team, kicking in doors, bringing in gardaí and social workers and generally overreacting. That person was trying to express a cry for help, and the HSE must recognise that the onus of responsibility is to deliver the services for people who are carers. It should not react in the manner of a police state when people become exasperated because nothing is happening. That is the next thing on which the Minister of State needs to focus his attention. He must ensure that the resources are available for the HSE and that it does its job.

Mr. Aidan Browne, the HSE's national director of community care, attended the Joint Committee on Health and Children yesterday and talked about issues regarding the elderly. He used a soft non-confrontational voice, which nearly lulled the committee members to sleep. The only trouble was that most of us who deal with the HSE were very angry with Mr. Browne's attitude. We know he has been trying to give the impression that he has been doing everything humanly possible, when he was doing nothing. He was writing letters and articles in The Irish Times, indicating that the HSE was doing everything it possibly could and pleading that people were misquoting him. Two weeks later he was exposed in an official report and changed the bar again. I will not fall for any of that old nonsense from the HSE, and Deputy Brian Lenihan, as the Minister of State with responsibility for children, should ensure that the resources are in place for it to do its job properly.

There is no point in having the best legislation in the world or a Minister of State who is genuinely committed to children if the HSE falls down on its responsibilities. Its responsibilities include having the resources and keeping up the morale of the people it employs whether social workers, administrators or foster parents. It must ensure they have the help they require to look after these children. The figure is enormous — 5,000 children. We do not want to see the lives of 5,000 children damaged in any way because we do not fulfil our commitments, and that is extremely important. I know many of these children have no difficulties. They go into great families or stay with relatives. As a former general practitioner I have plenty of experience of children taken into care. It can be quite chaotic because in many instances the parents want to take their children back from foster care. One always tries to give the benefit of the doubt, but unfortunately that often fails. That is another thing the HSE must be careful about. The pendulum can swing both ways. Sometimes we get too liberal and children are damaged. Sometimes the pendulum swings the other way, we are too conservative and restrict children from going back to their families. That is why the lines of communication must be kept open. If we are very open and transparent about what we do, we can always allow ourselves to give the benefit of the doubt. We can allow children to go back, not just to have contact with the natural parents. Such initiative can also fail of course. There are problems arising from drink, drugs and relationships and people have problems coping. Some of these young and not-so-young parents who put children into foster care are just not capable of looking after them at a young age. All these difficulties must be acknowledged but they must be approached in a humane rather than a hardline official manner.

I have seen great people do this work, some of them extremely poor. They bring their prejudices with them and often display a tendency to cover themselves in the face of establishment diktats, which is not necessarily in the best interest of the people involved. There are also problems with the courts. The Minister of State should look at the way the courts are working. He is well aware of some of these issues. Others hit the headlines, such as access to children by fathers, or judgments almost written in stone where nobody has the courage to ask whether the right decisions had been taken. I have seen both mothers and fathers denied access to children, even where parents had radically changed their former behaviour regarding alcohol or drug abuse. They might have been wild young tearaways but have settled down. What is said in court about parents who were formerly engaged in alcohol or drug abuse, or who were wild in their youth, sticks to them for the rest of their lives, even when they settle down. Opinions of them are biased forever. We therefore need to consider how the courts operate. Politicians and general practitioners often use a lot more common sense than the letter of the law might prescribe.

Consider the recent row between the Minister of State with special responsibility for mental health services, Deputy Tim O'Malley, and the professors of psychiatry. Too many people take up positions on either end of the spectrum and this does nobody any good. The Minister of State, Deputy Brian Lenihan, needs to consider how the courts operate so their judgments will be more child friendly. The Deputy has great legal knowledge and this should be used to the maximum benefit in the House to deliver the political outcomes we always seek.

Many children are still in poverty. We can argue until the cows come home about relative and absolute poverty but the fact remains that many children are not getting the best from life. It is not necessarily a question of money. It is sometimes stated children are impoverished because their parents are spending so much on drink or are not spending money appropriately but it is sometimes the case that they cannot cope. The Minister of State should therefore promote the concept of parenting courses among the members of Cabinet.

A great study was carried out in the United States some years ago. The practitioners concerned were testing a trial drug for ADHD, which is disruptive behaviour in young children. The parents of the recruited children had to do a parenting course but while they were doing so half the children had to be taken off the drug because their behaviour improved dramatically. It was discovered that their condition was largely influenced by their parents not being able to carry out their parental duties as well as they believed they could.

Society is changing dramatically. There are more one-parent families than there were traditionally and the social cohesion that existed even a decade ago has declined. The extended family unit is not as prevalent as it used to be. Both parents work nowadays and some live in opposite parts of the country. Not all parents are in middle-income, two-car households but are often in lower-income groups. Many of those receiving family income supports are among the working poor. Perhaps they could benefit from my proposals. We should take a wider view of why children end up in care or are disruptive in school, and of why parents are having difficulties. We should determine ways to help them, including parenting courses.

The Taoiseach announced at the Fianna Fáil Ard-Fheis that he wanted to hold the referendum on children's right next February or March. I am sure it came as a great shock to the Minister of State, Deputy Brian Lenihan, because it certainly came as a great shock to me. On the basis of my preparatory work for the referendum and that of my colleagues who have more responsibility in this area, I felt the issue was so broad that we could not determine the wording to be inserted into the Constitution so soon. I was therefore quite surprised by the Taoiseach's statement and felt he must have received some extraordinary advice on how to change the Constitution. He may have received some of it from the Minister of State. I would certainly not like to believe somebody is attempting to use children for political gain or flying a kite in that regard. Perhaps we will hear more about this from the Minister of State.

This legislation is relatively straightforward. Nobody would have any great difficulties with what has been presented to us so far. The period in question should be shortened and the rights of children should be considered more broadly. I hope the Minister of State will make appropriate amendments on Committee Stage on foot of the recommendations in the Ferns Report. I hope he will push for other legislative measures to meet the needs of children before the Government leaves office some time next April or May and that he will ensure the HSE structure protects children.

We should consider expanding parenting courses for those who need them. This is done in an ad hoc way across the country. Certain voluntary groups and other organisations funded by the HSE conduct them. It is necessary to talk to social workers who act in loco parentis and administrators in the HSE so we will not swing the pendulum too broadly. Nobody wants a repeat of the Cleveland affair in the Irish system, nor does anyone want to return to the days that produced the incident in Kilkenny so many years ago, which is driving much of the work we are doing today.

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