Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

As the Minister acknowledged, my original question was related not only to child protection teams, I also asked about child mental health teams, early intervention teams and disability teams, as well as the staff shortages in these areas. It is not acceptable for the Minister to say, in a bureaucratic way, that they are within the remit of another Minister. She is Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, not just Minister for child protection teams or social workers.

The Government talks about the need for joined-up thinking and co-ordination and its commitment to child protection. In her press release last Tuesday the Minister said there must be "robust safeguarding arrangements within all organisations working with children". Therefore, there must be joined-up thinking and co-ordination. We should be able to get an answer from the Minister on how the various services working with children are staffed, whether there are staff shortages and the problems they might cause. The Irish Medical Organisation has reported massive shortages in child mental health teams. For example, one team lost one third of its staff in the last year owing to retirements, staff going on maternity leave and redeployments. It now has eight members of staff, instead of the 38 recommended in A Vision for Change and can do only emergency work. It is part of the Minister's responsibility to say this is unacceptable. Children are being put at risk as a result.

I welcome the Government's commitment to publish the Children First guidelines, but what is meant by "shortly"? Publication was promised before Easter. Will publication be matched by the provision of resources? How can we seriously talk about child protection if we have child mental health teams with eight staff instead of the necessary 38? That is not child protection.

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