Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left) | Oireachtas source

The Minister would clearly agree that data are very important to us in order to evaluate our policies and improve our services. We all agree that it is generally in the best interests of the child for him or her to remain with his or her parents if at all possible and for that family to receive the support it needs to get to that place. If a child is removed from his or her parents, it should be based on a reunification plan to get them back based on strict criteria for what the parents need to do in that regard.

It is emerging that a disproportionately large number of the children come from an ethnic background in which at least one parent is not Irish. That could be for a number of reasons. It could be related to the higher levels of poverty that exist in those groups, particularly among asylum seekers who are not permitted to work. There can also be cultural factors. In some African and eastern European countries, parents have a much stricter approach to discipline - this might echo the Ireland of a generation or two ago - whereby they might nearly be regarded as negligent parents if they do not bring up their children to respect authority in a way that we might deem to be unacceptably rough. Cultural training of social workers is critical. There needs to be support for families whose family network is not around them in Ireland. Other troublesome families have a family network to lean on if they are in trouble. People who have come to this country do not have that. We need to be sensitive and take on board some of those points.

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