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

The clear message being sent out by the recently formed Department of Children and Youth Affairs and its Minister has received a major boost today. The new child and family agency, which will initially incorporate the Family Support Agency and the National Education Welfare Board, will create a child-centred system whose services will respond to the needs of children where they arise as opposed to those children and their families being obliged to adapt to that system. We have been informed that local multidisciplinary teams will bring local services under one manager, with direct lines of communication to a centralised office under the jurisdiction of Mr. Gordon Jeyes. Mr. Jeyes, whom I have come to know during the past six to nine months, is a superb catch for this country. There will be clear lines of accountability and the provision of child and family services will be the exclusive job of every senior executive.

What Deputy Mattie McGrath stated about people from the HSE joining the new agency and bringing a culture with them was absolutely outrageous. These people care about children and about ensuring that a single functioning agency with clear lines of responsibility and accountability will provide the services they require. A total of 17 major strategy reports on child protection failings in Ireland have been compiled since 1980. The most recent of these, the Gibbons-Shannon report into the death of children in care, which was published last year, shows that at one point 15 different agencies were involved with one young person who died. The Bill is very welcome because it will reform our fragmented child protection system by increasing accountability, providing early services and - for once - applying joined-up thinking. The most shocking aspect of the report on the deaths of children in care is not really the neglect and abuse detailed but rather the systematic chaos caused by an overabundance of agencies and institutions being involved in dealing with such children. The children in question were vulnerable and they had extensive contact with so many public services designed to protect them. However, each of those services failed at different stages.

The child and family agency represents a fresh start. It is clear from the legislation that family services will be prioritised. The latter was not the case in the past. Under the Bill, we will move from a position where child and family welfare was barely a priority to one where it will be the sole focus of a single dedicated State agency overseen by a single Government Department and an extremely dedicated Minister. This new agency is arguably the most significant development for child and family services in the past 20 years.

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