Barry Andrews (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

I thank all the Deputies for their contributions and I will reply to the best extent I can to them. Naturally, as there was some repetition, if I miss out on anybody, I might have dealt with it in a previous context.

Deputy Shatter was highly political in his contribution, not untypically, in claiming that nothing had changed over the course of the past 13 years. He tried to attribute that exclusively to the Government. Of course so much has changed. It has almost entirely changed and is unrecognisable from 13 years ago, but there remain core difficulties that continue to need to be addressed. What has changed is remarkable. We could take the issue of institutional abuse and the manner in which redress and the commission of inquiry has managed to tackle that, the manner in which the Murphy commission has tackled diocesan abuse and other issues that are ongoing. For example, the Deputy insinuates himself into initiating the inquiries into child deaths. If he reads the implementation plan - I suspect he probably did not do so before this debate - he will see that I recommended that HIQA set up the guidance that now underpins all future inquiries into child deaths and provide us with a national standard and a systematic way of inquiring into child deaths and reporting on them. I asked HIQA to that and it has done so. That is completed and is one of the important things we do. The only occasion when members of the public get to look at these kinds of issues is in the context of a crisis.

In fairness, I believe Deputy Finian McGrath really hit the nail on the head. He was the only Deputy to speak about early intervention. We can talk all we like about the deaths, the high-level issues and the stuff in the newspapers, but one will never get widespread front-page headline news about the success of early intervention. He spoke about foster parents who are intervening. They are described by Geoffrey Shannon as ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

We should start thinking and applying the mind of the Oireachtas to how we are to support early intervention. We should have the Whips calling for debates about how this will work and how all those in the education sector, whether the National Education Welfare Board, the National Educational Psychological Service, youth justice, all those working in youth diversion programmes and in youth work, can direct themselves at working on early intervention so that we do not have these problems. We should ensure that people like Daniel McAnaspie can be identified at a much earlier stage and be tackled earnestly by people who have the professional expertise, the will and the desire to make a change in these lives. We never have that debate in the Oireachtas and it is unfortunate we do not turn our minds to those things because when the Oireachtas turns its mind to something, it can effect change.

Deputy Jan O'Sullivan had specific queries about money and whether the analogy with Professor Keane was worth making. Professor Keane was allocated new money for cancer care, not the existing budget, and the same is envisaged in this case, although I will need to develop this in more detail. The €15 million in the December 2010 budget is the kind of money. The new person will provide leadership at national director level to put through the various road maps that have been designed for business process, knowledge management strategy and with regard to the PA Consulting report on management. Any new money in that regard will be assigned to this person.

The Deputy is correct in saying that child protection is more complicated. Perhaps because it is more nuanced, it requires human interaction and judgments that are extremely difficult. Unlike surgery, one is trying to make a decision as to whether a child should be taken into care on a Friday evening. The social worker has to balance the risk of leaving the child with the family or take him or her into care. This is a very difficult choice and our social workers do this on a daily basis. They need to know that if they take the risk of leaving a child with a slightly dysfunctional family, that there will not be a strident and shrill media reaction that will condemn social workers for making decisions that are very difficult in difficult circumstances. However, the Oireachtas does not have that discussion either, about how society shares the risk and empowers social workers to make these tough decisions and to try to put the resources into these families, by early intervention, by providing supports in the community to families who are struggling.

With regard to Deputy O'Sullivan's points about the Saving Childhood Ryan campaign, we are on target to achieve almost everything she read out. The one area where I concede we have not made sufficient progress is with regard to the review of section 5 of the Child Care Act 1991 dealing with homeless children. I acknowledge that, but on every other count, we are making progress on those issues. In answer to her question as to whether the figures are commensurate with other countries, I am unable to conclude whether that is true. The independent review group whose members are Geoffrey Shannon and Norah Gibbons, will turn its mind to whether we are in unusual territory in this area. We cannot come to any conclusions on this point and this will be part of the report to be furnished and laid before this House before the end of the year.

The Deputy also said there should be a full Cabinet Minister responsible for this area. I will address this issue once and for all by saying that I am at Cabinet. I do not have a vote but there has never been a vote so I do not see what other steps can be taken in that regard. I have sufficient position to ensure that the priority afforded to this area is acted upon.

Deputy Ó Caoláin raised a number of issues. He and other speakers referred to a figure of 1,200 social workers. I do not believe this will solve our problems. I have academic papers which suggest it can cause problems. I can share this paper with Deputy Ó Caoláin. It relates to another jurisdiction where the number of social workers was doubled but this simply doubled the number of suspected cases, none of them substantiated to a greater extent than had been the case previously. The system is simply flooded with reporting. For example, there are failures in Dublin North-Central and in Dublin North-West but there are no failures in Dublin North which has neither extra social workers nor extra resources. It is probably a case of better management there. This is the question we have to ask. We should forget about 1,200 social workers because it will not happen. The 200 social workers recruited this year and a further 70 next year will allow us to achieve the basic targets we need to ensure we have allocated social workers. We have care plans that are regularly reviewed and assessments of foster carers.

The Child Care (Amendment) Act 2007, allowed that the in camera rule would be relaxed. Any barrister, solicitor or a person appointed by me, can do a Carol Coulter-style inquiry into District Court judgments and decisions in the area of child care to provide us with a better assessment. I am giving active consideration to this provision. This was also a recommendation of the Joint Committee on the Constitutional Amendment on Children, which reported last February, that a proper study should be undertaken of the type of information coming from the District Court in order to inform public policy.

The Government established HIQA and empowered it to collect files and this is what is happening for the first time. This is a substantial change and now we know where the failures are. HIQA is investigating the files and finding the deficits. I do not wish to make a political point but this Government empowered HIQA. If the Government is to have to take a pasting on some other issues, at least we can take credit for the fact that we put the organisation in the position that it could lift the rug and find out what was going on. I acknowledge there have been failures in record-keeping and this is not acceptable but we did not know this before. Mr. Justice Ryan brought it to our attention with regard to institutions and it is very regrettable that it continues to be the case.

I am unable to go into detail on all the other issues raised. Deputy Naughten has raised the question of separated children seeking asylum. As he will know from the implementation plan, our core target is to close the remaining hostels towards the end of December this year. Three hostels have already been closed and the others are being inspected.

The Government is doing its best on the implementation plan which contains an extremely ambitious set of targets. Together with reforms in the HSE to which I referred in my opening comments, they provide hope. The Oireachtas needs to turn its attention to how there can be intervention at an earlier level in people's lives, whether through justice, through the health area, through speech and language therapy. Studies of the lives of those involved in the criminal justice system have shown evidence of speech and language delay. This causes such people to disassociate from schooling and there is a compounding effect throughout their lives. More work and discussion about this area will mean better outcomes for our children.

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