Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I look forward to that because I believe the model the Minister is talking about will provide a lot of protection for the children affected by such abuse. One of the issues identified in Dr. Geoffrey Shannon's report related to repeated incidents at weekends, once a month or every three months concerning alcohol addiction and violence within the home. In such cases, members of An Garda Síochána felt they had no option but to go into homes as there was no out-of-hours service and the only recourse was to put children aged three, five, seven, ten or 15 years of age into the back of a Garda car and take them to the local Garda station and mind them until the situation blew over. That part of the report is not as in-depth as the Minister outlined but that is the reality of what we are experiencing at the moment. Dr. Geoffrey Shannon highlighted the issue very well. It is the here and now I am talking about and how we are going to address that.

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