Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

Of the 62 meetings, I believe Deputy Gogarty appeared four times and not at all in the years 2009 or 2010. He is the Chairman of the Joint Committee on Education and Science. The article we propose should be included in the Constitution is new and it addresses children's rights, including the right of children to education, a matter of unique concern to a chairman of an education committee. It touches briefly on the education articles already in the Constitution. If education is about anything it is the future of our children. Essentially, Deputy Gogarty either boycotted the committee or simply did not regard it as sufficiently important to participate in. It is quite extraordinary and I cannot fathom it. It seems the Green Party is more obsessed about saving the corncrake than protecting our children. Perhaps its members are so consumed by rotating proposals that they cannot get their head around other issues of greater importance to the outside world.

I refer to the Minister, Deputy Gormley, who received great headlines in the Irish Times calling for a children's rights referendum at the time of the publication of the Murphy commission report or the Ryan commission report - I may have the dates confused. I could not fathom the difference between the public presentation and the private contribution of the Green Party on this issue. In addition to calling on the Cabinet to state where it stands on this proposal, I call on the Green Party, as a separate party in Government, to clarify if it has any interest in it. Does it support the report or does it disagree with it? If it disagrees, it should inform us.

Deputy O'Rourke may find it surprising or she may simply find it alarming but there is nothing she said today with which I disagree. No one should suggest this proposal is the panacea to all our problems. There is a great deal we can do to protect children by reforming the way our child care services work and by addressing issues to which we have referred in the House during the course of the past ten days. That can be done without constitutional change. If constitutional change were effected along the lines we propose without these other issues being addressed or reforms introduced, children would not get the care and protection now recognised as their right in this proposal, children's voices would not be heard and their welfare would not be protected.

We must radically change our approach. The Minister of State should not be sanguine in informing the House or people outside that the world has changed. I have no wish to revisit the tragic cases that we have heard about in recent days and which have been discussed at great length. All one need do is pick up today's Irish Examiner or Irish Daily Mail, two papers which highlight major deficiencies in our child care system. Both newspapers document the case of a young Chinese girl who came to this country at the beginning of this year but who has since disappeared. She was put in foster care for one day, then a bed and breakfast and there is concern now that she is being sexually trafficked. What has happened to this girl? She is one of more than 500 young people who have come to this country and who have disappeared. If they were Irish there would be a furore about it, but because they are not, this issue is not getting the attentions it deserves. Shocking revelations about continuing failure in our foster care system are disclosed in the Irish Examiner, indicating quite clearly and confirming that assurances given by the HSE about the future vetting and assessment of foster parents were not implemented despite those undertakings being given to HIQA. The Minister of State, Deputy Barry Andrews, needs to take a more dramatic and direct involvement in this than he has to date. I do not want to come into this House to raise the case of more young people who have died because they have been failed by the child care services. 2 o'clock

I draw the attention of the Minister of State to the case of a young man of 16 years who is currently the responsibility of Bridge House, Ballyfermot region - care area 5 within the HSE. He is a 16 year old child who has been going through the care system for approximately two and a half years. He is awaiting psychiatric assessment, but he has fallen into an age band where he is not considered either a child or an adult because he is between 16 and 18. He is no longer in the education system, he is becoming drug dependent and he is falling into a street life where he will be exposed to drug running and prostitution. On Tuesday night of this week this young man was left in an Internet café all night by the HSE because there was no suitable location to accommodate him. This young man could potentially be another Tracey Fay.

I ask the Minister of State to intervene to find out what is happening with regard to this young man, and how any 16 year old could be left overnight in an Internet café. This is a troubled young person who needs serious coherent co-ordinated intervention and who is being failed, and emergency social workers who are dealing with this young man are at their wits' end to get a response from management within the HSE.

I want to give the Minister of State a second example - I can give him in private the names of the individuals to whom I refer. A 17 year old child with severe mental health difficulties, he has been known in the emergency care services for four weeks. A psychiatric assessment took place in St. James's Hospital a couple of weeks ago but there has been no follow-up. Essentially, this young man is floating between two social work areas, Naas and Tralee, neither of which will take responsibility for dealing with him. There is no communication between the two areas that matters, which makes it impossible to co-ordinate the care response or even to access basic information. He comes from a background in which, it is believed, he has been seriously sexually abused and this young man is exhibiting behaviour that has been a cause of difficulty to social work personnel. Essentially, he is cut loose.

These are two young persons who are, perhaps tonight, still wandering our streets. There is also the case of Danny McAnaspie, a 16 year old boy with severe problems. This young boy, who has disappeared now for eight days, is also in care. This is in the newspapers this morning and I am not revealing any confidences in this House that I should not reveal.

We have a grossly dysfunctional unco-ordinated child protection service which continues up to today to fail our young people. Constitutional amendments are not required to address the tragic difficulties of these young persons. What is needed is to actively resolve the systemic failures and structural difficulties within the HSE that the Minister is struggling to resolve.

I want to see amending legislation brought into this House. I want to see the Health Act 2004, which created the HSE, amended. I want to see the HSE under a direct obligation to furnish information to the Minister of State with responsibility for children and youth affairs. I want the Minister of State with responsibility for children and youth affairs made a senior Cabinet post, not some sort of supernumerary who is sort of half-way in and half-way out. I want to ensure that policy directives from the Minister of State with responsibility for children and youth affairs are implemented by the HSE and that there is accountability where things go wrong.

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