Results 41-60 of 4,009 for speaker:Martin Browne

Committee on Public Petitions: Business of Joint Committee (9 May 2024)

Martin Browne: Apologies have been received from Senator Eugene Murphy. I thank Senator Cassells for substituting for him. I welcome everyone to the meeting. The first item on the agenda is the approval of the minutes of the private and public meetings of 25 April 2024. The minutes have already been approved in a virtual private meeting but for procedural reasons they must be approved in public. Are...

Committee on Public Petitions: Ombudsman for Children's Annual Report 2022: Office of the Ombudsman for Children (9 May 2024)

Martin Browne: Our next business is an engagement with Dr. Niall Muldoon, Ombudsman for Children, to discuss the 2022 annual report, entitled Falling Behind, of the Office of Ombudsman for Children and related matters. I will explain some limitations to parliamentary privilege and the practice of the Houses as regards references witnesses may make to other persons in their evidence. The evidence of...

Committee on Public Petitions: Ombudsman for Children's Annual Report 2022: Office of the Ombudsman for Children (9 May 2024)

Martin Browne: I thank Dr. Muldoon. I will ask two quick questions before I let other members in. In the Plan for Places report published in June 2022, the Office of Ombudsman for Children focused on forward planning and the provision for school places for children with special educational needs. What is the office's current view on how the provisions for these schools are organised each year, because...

Committee on Public Petitions: Ombudsman for Children's Annual Report 2022: Office of the Ombudsman for Children (9 May 2024)

Martin Browne: Is there a reason? There was a rally in Clonmel in my own county last weekend with children with autism and this just keeps coming up. The data is there from when a child is young and has autism. It does not disappear in the May or June before he or she goes into school. Why is that kind of data not used to track children in autism all the way through? It should be used for school buses...

Committee on Public Petitions: Ombudsman for Children's Annual Report 2022: Office of the Ombudsman for Children (9 May 2024)

Martin Browne: In relation to the CAMHS-----

Committee on Public Petitions: Ombudsman for Children's Annual Report 2022: Office of the Ombudsman for Children (9 May 2024)

Martin Browne: Does Deputy Devlin wish to come in? The Deputy is probably going back into the Chamber in a few minutes.

Committee on Public Petitions: Ombudsman for Children's Annual Report 2022: Office of the Ombudsman for Children (9 May 2024)

Martin Browne: Okay. Does Senator Warfield wish to come in or does Deputy Buckley?

Committee on Public Petitions: Ombudsman for Children's Annual Report 2022: Office of the Ombudsman for Children (9 May 2024)

Martin Browne: I will ask a couple of questions. In January of this year, Dr. Muldoon's office wrote to the Minister for Justice asking that the office be removed from the new strategy combatting domestic and gender-based violence because funding was being cut, or it had been promised but just did not come through. Can Dr. Muldoon outline the reasons behind that? What, if anything, has happened since?

Committee on Public Petitions: Ombudsman for Children's Annual Report 2022: Office of the Ombudsman for Children (9 May 2024)

Martin Browne: No willingness to follow it through.

Committee on Public Petitions: Ombudsman for Children's Annual Report 2022: Office of the Ombudsman for Children (9 May 2024)

Martin Browne: It is actually a scandal for such small money that this kind of work cannot be done.

Committee on Public Petitions: Ombudsman for Children's Annual Report 2022: Office of the Ombudsman for Children (9 May 2024)

Martin Browne: Did Dr. Muldoon say he was in communication with the Department of Justice, which said the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth should be doing it, and that the Minister with responsibility for children had not even heard about it in the first year?

Committee on Public Petitions: Ombudsman for Children's Annual Report 2022: Office of the Ombudsman for Children (9 May 2024)

Martin Browne: Therefore, I take it there is nothing happening with that strategy at all at this stage.

Committee on Public Petitions: Ombudsman for Children's Annual Report 2022: Office of the Ombudsman for Children (9 May 2024)

Martin Browne: The Office of Ombudsman for Children has pulled back, however.

Committee on Public Petitions: Ombudsman for Children's Annual Report 2022: Office of the Ombudsman for Children (9 May 2024)

Martin Browne: It has no role at all.

Committee on Public Petitions: Ombudsman for Children's Annual Report 2022: Office of the Ombudsman for Children (9 May 2024)

Martin Browne: As Deputy Buckley said earlier, if we were to put pressure on the Department and it had to come up with the funding, would Dr. Muldoon's office be willing to come back in and do that work?

Committee on Public Petitions: Ombudsman for Children's Annual Report 2022: Office of the Ombudsman for Children (9 May 2024)

Martin Browne: They are all over it.

Committee on Public Petitions: Ombudsman for Children's Annual Report 2022: Office of the Ombudsman for Children (9 May 2024)

Martin Browne: One thing we can do here is try to put that pressure on.

Committee on Public Petitions: Ombudsman for Children's Annual Report 2022: Office of the Ombudsman for Children (9 May 2024)

Martin Browne: Yes, go ahead.

Committee on Public Petitions: Ombudsman for Children's Annual Report 2022: Office of the Ombudsman for Children (9 May 2024)

Martin Browne: Even if it were doubled it would still be small in the overall scheme of things and what the strategy can do.

Committee on Public Petitions: Ombudsman for Children's Annual Report 2022: Office of the Ombudsman for Children (9 May 2024)

Martin Browne: The committee will follow it up and try to put pressure on. As Dr. Muldoon has said, gender-based and domestic violence are a problem. Everyone admits they are on the increase. To think a strategy such as this, which would be a massive help for such small money, is not happening when I can assure everyone that while we are having this conversation the HSE has wasted this kind of money...