Luke Flanagan (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will be supporting the referendum. It is great progress. I have read a good deal on this in the past week but regardless of what I read, I had a meeting this morning with representatives of the Children's Rights Alliance and having listened to their argument and the information I got from them, I have to say I will not be able to sum it up any better than them. As they say, if you cannot beat it, why not repeat it?

The Children's Rights Alliance gives five key reasons for supporting the children's referendum. First, for the first time the Constitution will take a child-centred approach to the protection of all children and will allow for the State better to support families that are struggling rather than wait for a situation to reach crisis point. No one can have a problem with that. Obviously, that is a welcome development. Second, it will allow up to 2,000 children currently in long-term State care the opportunity to be adopted and given a second chance to have a loving, stable and permanent family. We have seen situations in the past where that was not possible and it created hell for some of those children. That is very welcome.

Third, it will base child care, adoption, guardianship, custody and access decisions on what is best for the interests of the child. Yet again, no one can argue with that. It is obvious. Unfortunately, for years the State was more focused on preserving the family regardless of the hell the family brought on the child. This is a welcome measure.

Fourth, it will ensure the judges listen to the views of children when making decisions in child care, adoption, guardianship, custody and access cases. I understand this is where the children are old enough or they have the mental capacity to do so. That makes sense. Obviously, we should listen to the child. The child will be able to tell us what is happening and what is best for them.

Fifth, it will set out how we as a country now view and value children and move beyond the damning history of child abuse in Ireland. Again, one could not disagree with that.

Obviously, this is good news but the cloud of resources hangs over everything. Without resources, how can we successfully achieve what we are trying to achieve? In recent days some organisations stated that we are facing a further six or eight tough budgets in a row, and that will affect resources.

I have spoken to people who work in this area and while they are delighted that something is finally being done and well done on that, they are worried that when this happens, if it does happen, the resources will not be in place to deal with the consequences. In some child care facilities children who have been sexually abused are housed with children who have sexually abused. We have situations where children have got over the mental torture of what happened to them only for another child, in some cases with serious mental difficulties, to be brought in with them. That is not on. As some people who worked in the service would say, and they will remain confidential because they educated me on it, at the current level of resources the Health Service Executive and the State are not a safe family. If we pass this measure we must make sure that the people we are trying to help are properly helped.

I am also told by people who work in this area that there are not enough resources for psychological help, counselling and so on. That must change.

Ideally, no one would end up in these facilities, which will never be ideal because they will never replace the family. To ensure that fewer people end up in this situation, we must provide support at a very young age. I hope the Family Support Agency will sort that out. In that way we will have more resources in the long term. It is cheaper and less expensive to do that at an early age which means we will have more resources for the hard cases.

I am aware from talking to many people who work in this area that it breaks their heart to have to say that they know that many of these children will end up in prison. There is no shortage of resources at that stage, when it is too late. The prison in my town spends over €100,000 a year trying to help people but if those people had been helped as a child it would have cost a fraction of that. Resources will be a problem. If we use resources well we might be able to hold our heads a little higher because at the moment, from what I know about what is going on, I am embarrassed to be a citizen of this country.

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