Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

This morning I want to raise with the Minister serious concerns around child protection and children's welfare that have been highlighted in a report released today by UCD's sexual exploitation research programme, SERP. The study is about young women and children in State care and in residential care homes and it makes for very distressing reading. It provides a very alarming account of the targeting and sexual exploitation of children and teenagers in State care. The exploitation is being carried out by co-ordinated gangs. The harrowing findings in this research detail cases of girls being taken by taxi from residential care homes to hotels where they were then sexually exploited and abused.

The Minister might have heard Ruth Breslin speak on the matter this morning. The report's authors describe an appalling vista of cars lining up at night outside State-funded and run residential care homes, waiting for young women and girls to come out so they can be taken away. The abuse appears to be systematic and orchestrated. It is an appalling finding. What is also appalling is the perception that emerges from within the study that authorities have grown “tired” of dealing with so-called “problematic” young girls in care being reported missing. That is quite simply not good enough. These girls are at a high risk of sexual exploitation and abuse. Indeed, Tusla has accepted that it failed to keep children safe. It has said this in part due to an insufficient supply of residential places to allow children at risk to move elsewhere to a place of greater safety.

Many years ago, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I used to represent children in State care. There was a real scarcity then of residential places to keep children safe in these situations. We are now a prosperous country. I have listened to the Minister outline the benefits of prosperity and what is effectively full employment. It is appalling therefore that in 2023 we are still seeing a lack of places where children can be kept safe.

My first question echoes that posed by Tanya Ward, CEO of the Children's Rights Alliance, who has asked in response to this report how many cases of suspected abuse of children in State care have been passed on to Tusla or to the Garda. Has the Government been monitoring these awful cases? Does the Government’s reported new focus on poverty and child poverty in particular include these concerns in its scope?

As Minister for Finance, how does he propose to address the funding problems reported by Tusla, which are leaving children so exposed to exploitation?

I heard the Minister announce earlier today that every worker in the State will receive a tax cut in the budget this October. How about we guarantee instead that every child in the State will receive an appropriate home, a place of safety? This Government has an appalling record also on child homelessness. Some years ago, the former Deputy and Minister of State, Jan O'Sullivan, introduced the homeless families Bill, which would prioritise the rights of children at risk of homelessness. Will the Minister address the needs of homeless children in a meaningful way by accepting our Bill? What does the Minister propose to do in response to today’s report by UCD’s SERP centre?

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