Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I want to raise the issue of the large financial burden associated with supervised visits. This is a situation where a family court orders a parent or guardian to have supervised access to their children. The State does not provide this supervised access. The parents have to pay fees to a private company in order to spend time with their children. Some of these private companies are massively overcharging vulnerable parents who just want to spend time with their kids. One of my constituents states that her personal experience of using the service provided by Supervised Access Ireland was that she was paying the fee for a three-hour visit when getting only a two-hour visit, and when her visits increased to three hours instead of paying the three-hour visit fee of €104.25 she was charged €139, the cost of a four-hour visit. A single mother, who eventually wants to reunite with her son, has to pay one third of her wages for a three-hour visit with him. Surely this is a basic support the State should be providing. The State is making the order to say there needs to be supervised visits. Surely it is a service the State should provide.

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