Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

Would the Taoiseach accept that there is widespread concern that the Government is merely paying lip service to children's rights and child protection? Would he acknowledge that the concern is built on very solid foundations, given that not a single recommendation in the report of an all-party committee on child protection issues, which was published in autumn 2006, has been implemented? The Office of the Minister for Children's review of the operation of the Children First child protection guidelines which was published at the end of July 2008 referred extensively to the failure to apply them uniformly across the State and to the reality that children who were at risk were not given the protection to which they were entitled. The concern that the Government and the current and past Ministers of State with responsibility for children are only paying lip service to this issue was compounded by the report published by the Ombudsman for Children yesterday. It quite astonishingly reveals that, following the review carried out by the Office of the Minister for Children which confirmed that the Children First child protection guidelines were not being implemented, a high level group within that Department which was established in 2008 to ensure application of the child protection guidelines did not meet on one occasion in 2009.

Would the Taoiseach acknowledge that the ultimate condemnation of the current Minister of State with responsibility for children and the Minister for Health and Children, and their predecessors in Fianna Fáil-led Governments in this State since 2007, is the finding by the Ombudsman for Children of serious maladministration in the Office of the Minister for Children? The report details quite clearly that over a period of eight years there was an utter failure to exercise the oversight the Department took upon itself to ensure the full and uniform application of the Children First guidelines. Will the Taoiseach explain the reason for the maladministration or, in the diplomatic statutory language of the Ombudsman for Children, a failure that constitutes unsound administration under section 8 of the Ombudsman for Children Act 2002? Will he explain why, during the period he was Minister for Finance and subsequently Taoiseach, there has been unsound administration, a failure to ensure uniform application of the child protection guidelines and, along the east coast under the old health boards and under the current HSE, there has been a cover-up of an industrial dispute with the IMPACT union which has resulted in instructions being issued to social workers not to apply fully the child protection guidelines? Will the Taoiseach acknowledge that the delay in even acknowledging that a referendum on children's rights will take place this year absolutely confirms that the Government is doing nothing other than paying lip service and is prepared to sacrifice the welfare of children to cheap headlines and sound-bites in the daily newspapers?

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