James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)

First, I congratulate the Minister of State on her appointment to her new role as Minister of State with responsibility for disability at Cabinet. It is a very important and challenging role.

The issue I am discussing is not unrelated insofar as it concerns the safeguarding of children. Some weeks ago, the CEO of Tusla appeared before the Committee of Public Accounts. We probed her in respect of the issue of unaccompanied minors seeking international protection and how they are cared for within a Tusla setting. At that meeting, the concern that Tusla has on the whole area of age verification was revealed to us. As it happens, that particular meeting predated a number of incidents, which I will not speak about here, including some tragic incidents that have taken place. It is a real worry and concern. Today, we have the figures, given in response to a parliamentary question, that there are over 200 people who Tusla has identified as, in fact, being adults, not children, and who have resided in a centre designed for children with international protection applicants who are unaccompanied minors. This is a real child safeguarding issue.

My concern is that it appears two State agencies - Tusla and the Department of justice - are somewhat at loggerheads and in dispute. Some weeks after the appearance of Tusla before the Committee of Public Accounts, we heard from the Department of justice, which was very firm in its view that the responsibility for carrying out age assessments or age verification rests solely in the hands of Tusla. However, when the Department wrote back to the committee several weeks later, it acknowledged that as a matter of law - the laws that have been passed in the Dáil, Seanad and Houses of the Oireachtas - the legal responsibility for carrying out age verification is, in fact, vested in the Department of justice and the Minister for justice.

It has been the practice for at least a decade that Tusla and its predecessors have, effectively, been given this function as an outsourcing function. When we think about what Tusla's responsibilities are, they are not to carry out legalistic determinations as to whether or not the people who are in its services require its services. Its job is to look after some of the most vulnerable children in this country, no matter what nationality the child may be, no matter in what circumstances the child entered its services.

There is now this additional challenging issue. Perhaps this is why it has not come to the fore previously but it has now. The issue is that the number of unaccompanied minors seeking international protection in Ireland has risen significantly at a time when the overall number of people seeking international protection is on the decline. At a time when we have enough accommodation to accommodate persons seeking international protection in this country, it is on the increase when it comes to unaccompanied minors. In the past year, there has been a 13.5% increase in the number of unaccompanied minors seeking international protection.

The truth is that we have a real challenge. We are looking after up to 600 unaccompanied minors, some of whom will have come from devastated parts of the world, and some of whom, no doubt, will have gone through traumatic journeys, where the risk of trafficking is significant. Now, added to that, we have the admitted concern that there are adults in the centres where there are children. What needs to happen is an intervention whereby we can get clarity as to who is carrying out age verification and how it is going to be properly invested in and resourced.

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