Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The State of the Nation's Children report, published last year, revealed Ireland has more than 1.1 million children, which at 25% of the total population is the highest percentage we have ever had and higher than in any other EU state. The Minister, Deputy Fitzgerald, recently said that these children represent unprecedented potential for Ireland's economic future and that we must look after them. Among the many positive trends noted in the report are that the number of newborn babies visited by a public health nurse within 48 hours of discharge from hospital rose to 84% for the first time. In addition, the number of children on hospital waiting lists dropped by 45% in the four years to the end of 2012. This is all good news. However, for many years we have been appalled and distressed by the findings of various reports into child abuse in our society. There has been a shameful catalogue of 17 major reports on child protection failings in Ireland in recent years. We must not think these horrors just occurred in the distant past. Child protection concerns have not suddenly gone away. The sad reality is they probably never will.

The Government is committed to transparency and honesty about the challenges in getting children's services right. The Minister, Deputy Fitzgerald, has kept her pledge to make a series of reforms, including strengthening the entitlement of children in care to aftercare services once they reach 18, establishing a new child and family support agency that will take responsibility for child protection away from the HSE and a nationwide consistency of approach in practice and implementation of guidelines on the handling of child-welfare and child-protection cases. The aim of every reform has been the same - to improve children's chances of growing up strong in every respect. It has become clear from various reports in recent years that have highlighted the scale and seriousness of child abuse in Ireland that there is a need to improve significantly Ireland's child protection and welfare services.

Last year, the Government strengthened children's rights, chose a site for their new hospital and faced up to past failures to care for vulnerable children. It was the year Ireland began to look a little more child centred.

The Bill amends section 17(2) of the Child Care Act 1991 and increases from eight to 29 days the period in respect of which a court may grant extensions of interim care orders in the absence of parental consent. I welcome the clarity this will provide. Currently, the HSE may seek a court order to take a child into its care for a maximum of eight days, without the consent of his or her parents.

Parents are the primary protectors of children and must, and will continue to be, supported in every possible way. In the small minority of cases where parents are struggling and not meeting their children's basic needs, intervention by the State must be such that it is fully confident it will make the child's life better. Protecting children and supporting families are two sides of the same coin.

This Government has consistently been about supporting families by reaffirming and underpinning early intervention and family support services to protect children in their homes. However, when that is not possible, we must step in and protect the child. It is never easy getting the balance right in the battle between parents and the HSE, and often within the HSE in terms of resources and best practice. We must ensure children are listened to and that their welfare is paramount. There are currently approximately 6,000 children in various forms of State care, many of whom have been in care for years. The number of referrals for suspected child abuse or neglect has increased by 50% since 2006, placing the child protection system under significant pressure. While there has been a big leap in this regard over the past two years, if we were to design a new system for children it would look nothing like the current system.

Many children in care are, and will remain, troubled. The publication of the independent child death review group report into the deaths of children in State care shocked the nation. It examined the decade from 2000 to 2010, during which time almost 200 children died in State care, or shortly after leaving it on reaching 18 years of age. Most of these deaths were from unnatural causes such as homicide, suicide and accidents. The report states that most of these children received an inadequate child protection service, that in some cases files were in complete disarray and that there was evidence that social services had closed files on some cases even though children were still at risk. More shocking still were the individual stories of ruined childhoods and preventable deaths.

There is no doubt but that the State failed in the past to adequately care for some of the children in its care. However, it is no solution to this problem to say that these children should have remained at home. They only found themselves in State care in the first instance because they suffered appalling neglect or abuse at home. A small minority of children will always require State intervention to protect them. Their welfare will be served by placing stronger obligations on the State to meet their needs and not by leaving things as they are.

The Garda Síochána and the HSE have powers to intervene if there are reasonable grounds to believe there is an immediate and serious risk to the welfare, safety or health of any child. The independent child death review group report demonstrated that while the short-term needs of the children identified in it had been met, in that they were taken into care because of a problem in their life at the time, this was not enough. Inevitably, many children in care are, and will remain, troubled. Appreciating the long-term difficulties that these children will face requires more action, which action is being taken by the Government through the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs. If these young men and women are to navigate the turbulence that awaits them in a world away from State care, there must be a commitment to the provision of a full range of services. According to the annual report of the Courts Service, the number of child care orders sought more than doubled last year. It is a striking statistic that care orders for children at risk more than doubled in 2011, which is a rise of 119% on the 2010 figure. This does not include emergency and interim care orders.

Ireland has fewer children in care per thousand of population than does England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Australia, which indicates the change management within our health and family services is working. We are also fortunate in this country in that more than 91% of children in care are in foster care, in a stable family setting. Almost eight out of ten children placed in care last year were removed from their homes because of abuse, neglect and serious family problems. One in five of the 2,218 children removed from their homes were taken into care because of chronic neglect. According to figures from the State's child protection services, some 736 of admissions were as a result of emergency or non-voluntary care orders. Every call to social workers on the child protection team reveals details of another human catastrophe, family breakdown, drug addiction, mental illness or child abuse. It is normally a hidden world of families living on the edge of society, on the edge of the health system and, in extreme circumstances, on the edge of life.

Child welfare practitioners tell us that they come across two types parents, namely, those who are vulnerable and love their children but cannot care for them and those who do not. The Department of Children and Youth Affairs will spend €260 million on early intervention and child care services this year and every year. However, this is not just about finances. We need to continue with a greater appreciation of the need for collective thinking and collective responsibility and the potential to learn from the other person's perspective. Children get lost when people step into defensive mode. Following publication of the report of the independent child death review group, many people expressed incomprehension at the scale of the tragedies and missed opportunities and questioned how such gross failings could occur in a system designed to protect the welfare of vulnerable children. We are moving forward and there are signs that these reforms are working. Social workers in the area say there are no waiting lists for child protection and that every case brought to their attention is allocated a social worker and responded to. There are many good news stories that will never make headlines but are profoundly benefiting many young people and families.

Protecting children is everyone's business. We will only get this right if the State, non-government organisations, communities and families work together. There must be greater accountability and better analysis of spending, with brave investment in policies such as early intervention, breakfast clubs, family support and early identification of speech and language difficulties that may not show immediate results, but will yield tenfold in a short space of time. A great many changes have been put in train. The Government is determined to get children's services right. Upon taking up office, this Government immediately made significant inroads to improving Ireland's child welfare and protection systems with the appointment at Government level of a Minister and Department of Children and Young Affairs. These are very important steps.

We have seen momentum in reform of our child protection services, through, for example, the child and family support agency, the children first legislation, the Criminal Justice (Withholding Information on Crimes Against Children and Vulnerable Adults) Bill and the National Vetting Bureau Bill, all of which mark significant progress in the direction of Ireland's commitment to improving child protection and welfare and set Ireland on course to meeting the recommendations set out by UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2006. We need laws that will protect children from harm and give them status as individuals. Childhood is a precious time. It does not last very long. Children must be protected and their rights promoted to ensure that they are consistently treated with the respect and dignity they deserve. As stated by Geoffrey Shannon, no child should suffer to protect an institution or be made to live a life of unspeakable abuse and neglect to protect his or her abusive parents. Children must be respected and the State empowered to adequately protect them.

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