Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the launch of the 116000 missing children hotline in Ireland which is being funded by my Department together with the EU. The 116000 missing children hotline is an EU-wide initiative designed to provide a single point of contact across the European Union for missing children and their families. The number is currently operational in 23 EU countries and the number has been allocated and is soon to be operational in a further four countries, including Croatia, the newest EU member state. In Ireland the service is operated by the ISPCC. I thank it for the work it has done on this. We have provided it with funding to establish this hotline.

It is now available 24 hours a day as a support for families in a dreadful position and also for children who are in a position to use it. Funding is provided through the Daphne funding system and the service is overseen by a cross-sectoral project team chaired by my Department. My Department provided €50,000 in 2012 to support the Irish Society for Protection of Cruelty to Children, ISPCC, in establishing the hotline and €88,000 this year. The funding received from both the EU Daphne project and my Department included the establishment costs and national promotion and advertisement of the service. In common with all Exchequer funding, requirements for the operation of the service in future years will be considered in the context of the usual Estimates process. We give very serious funding to the ISPCC in order for it to deliver the range of services it does so effectively.

The missing children hotline has been operating on a limited hours pilot basis in Ireland since December 2012 and on a full-time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week basis since April this year. The service was officially launched on 7 June and as it has been operating only for a very short period, reliable data on calls is not available at this time. Any available data at this point will necessarily include a substantial volume of test calls by groups such as the ISPCC, my own Department and others. We will have robust and more accurate data on calls to the service in the next quarter and after that on a quarterly basis. It is important to see how many children or family members are calling the service, and the ISPCC will provide that data on a quarterly basis.

Additional information not given on the floor of the House

A key component of the service is a successful awareness programme. It is vital that those who could benefit from the service know that it exists and that users are aware of the scope of the service. During the initial set-up phase of the service, the ISPCC focused on community-based promotion of the service, and this included presentations to local community groups. Posters, flyers and business cards have been distributed to all Garda stations from Garda headquarters, and promotional material has been distributed to a variety of community-based projects in various locations throughout the country. Furthermore, the ISPCC has made extensive use of social media such as Facebook and Twitter to advertise this service on an ongoing basis. The successful launch of the service on 7 June 2013 also provided the opportunity to further promote the service.

The 116000 missing children hotline website, www.missingchildrenhotline.ie, has also been launched to promote the service. To date, €35,000 has been spent on awareness measures and this amount will be doubled for further awareness measures in the remainder of 2013. It is important to note that the 116000 number is not an emergency number. Emergency calls should always be directed to the 999 or 112 number in the first instance, where the relevant emergency responses, including the recently launched Garda missing children amber alert mechanism, may be activated. The establishment of the 116000 line will, however, be of valuable support and assistance to families of missing children and to missing children themselves.

See this speech in context