Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the action the Minister has taken in this regard. If the Minister is appalled and the Ombudsman for Children is shocked at the lack of data, then I am comforted by the fact the Minister has sought to change this. We cannot work on policy to empower the most vulnerable of young people unless we have statistics. Considering schools are falling down on adapting to children in care, do we need to have a circular sent out from the Department to advise school principals and teachers on this? It is one thing to have a policy in place but another to have a circular guiding, encouraging and requiring schools to behave in a particular way.

The Minister stated that 96% of children in care between the ages of six and 16, inclusive, are in full-time education. That is a statutory requirement, however. The National Education Welfare Board does not deal with young people outside this age bracket. Any child who is four or five does not come under its remit. I will be introducing a Private Members’ Bill to deal with this soon. Neither does the NEWB deal with any young person aged 17 or 18, another failure in the system.

The report’s outstanding recommendation is to have a mechanism in place for the systematic gathering of data on the educational experience of children in care to inform evidence-based policy making. I hope this central issue will be addressed.

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