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

I welcome the legislation and the forthcoming referendum. I pay tribute to the Minister and anyone else who has been working on the proposed new article to the Constitution and whose efforts have resulted in it being brought forward for discussion. In any set of circumstances priority must be given to discussing the needs and rights of children. We must ensure these needs and rights are protected in law in every way possible. There is an even greater need in this regard in Ireland because there is a history of chronic failure on the part of the State to protect children. We have debated some of the State's failures in this regard during the past year or so, including the horrors experienced by those who were placed in the industrial schools, the Magdalene laundries and the Bethany Home residences. The failures to which I refer did not just occur in the distant past, they also happened more recently. I refer to the appallingly large numbers of children who were in the care of the State or for whom the State had a responsibility who died because it had failed to take steps to provide them with adequate protection. The failure to which I refer continues. We have a long way to go to ensure the rights of children will be protected. For example, there have been reports of serious abuse and the neglect of immigrant and refugee children in direct provision hostels. The Irish Refugee Council has called for an investigation into this matter in view of the fact that we do not know what is happening in these hostels or whether the rights of the children in them are being fully protected. There is also the example of children being placed in adult psychiatric wards because there is not an adequate number of child psychiatric places available. It is clearly not in the interests of children to be place in adult wards. Another example of the State's failure relates to the fact that, as a number of previous speakers indicated, the level of child poverty has actually increased in recent years as a result of the austerity measures being imposed.

Against this background, it is extremely important that the legislation before the House has been brought forward and that the entire population should debate how we can fully protect and vindicate the rights and welfare of children as an absolute priority. In that context, there is no doubt that the constitutional amendment will improve the situation. The fact that children were not specifically identified for protection within the Constitution meant that the constitutional imperative to protect the rights of the family often came in conflict with the requirement to protect children. It is both right and proper that the Government is moving to redress the balance and ensure the rights of children in the context of being heard and protected will be vindicated and placed at the centre of the Constitution. It is obvious that an issue also stands to be addressed in circumstances where parents who are willing to have their children adopted are impeded from doing so simply because they are married and so on. The change in this regard is very welcome.

Having said all of this, I must point out that there is a problem. This is not a problem which would lead me to oppose the amendment which should be supported, but laws, constitutional amendments and words on a page do not, in and of themselves, guarantee the rights and protections children need. Please allow me to state the obvious. Those who were placed in industrial schools, Bethany Home residences and Magdalene laundries were overwhelmingly the children of the poor. It was they who ended up being neglected and abused by the State. It is still overwhelmingly the poor, the least well-off and the most vulnerable in society who have needs and difficulties and require protection.

Simply asserting the legal right of children to be heard and protected, without addressing the root cause, will not solve the problem. Therefore, a constitutional imperative to protect children has to be backed up with the required resources to make this happen. I refer specifically to the health and social services to be provided. We must ensure child poverty is eliminated, that no child is in need of food or adequate housing and health care, that no child is disadvantaged educationally or will be disadvantaged if the State does not provide necessary supports for children in trouble or in difficulty or subject to abuse or neglect. While this legislation is welcome and points in the right direction, everything else the Government is doing in all of these areas is moving us in precisely the opposite direction. It is moving us away from a situation where children would be adequately protected.

Child care teams must be fully resourced, but the Children First guidelines for the protection of children have not been adequately implemented and remain to be placed on a statutory basis, although I acknowledge the Minister is working on this aspect of the matter. However, resources such as sufficient numbers of social workers will be needed. It is a question of how to square the €700 million in further cuts due to be made in the next budget and the €2 billion in health cuts made in recent years with a commitment to protect children and how to provide the resources necessary to protect children, considering the level of cuts planned in health funding in the December budget. How do we deal with the cap on the number of special needs assistants when we know that there are children who need support in the classroom and are being denied it or are not receiving the same level of support as they received in the past because of the cuts imposed by the troika in order to bail out bankers? These cuts run directly counter to the commitment to protect children.

Yesterday I raised the issue of cuts in the home help service. What happens if a mother develops schizophrenia or another debilitating illness and needs support and assistance but does not receive it? It is often the case that young children and teenagers have to look after their parents, with all of the consequences there might be for their development, rights and so on.

The policy of cutting lone parent supports, the number of special needs assistants, home help hours and the incomes of the least well-off will inevitably drive children into dangerous situations because the poverty that is visited on their parents has knock-on consequences for them. Unless we address the policies which are causing poverty, it is difficult to see how this proposal can make a significant difference.

See this speech in context