Results 121-140 of 1,347 for speaker:James Geoghegan

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2024: Tusla - the Child and Family Agency (2 Oct 2025)

James Geoghegan: I will just stop-----

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2024: Tusla - the Child and Family Agency (2 Oct 2025)

James Geoghegan: In the aftermath of those cases, the Minister, Deputy Foley, commissioned Tusla or an external agency to carry out a review into the Covid welfare checks that were taking place. Why did she do that in the wake of these missing children?

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2024: Tusla - the Child and Family Agency (2 Oct 2025)

James Geoghegan: Does Ms Duggan agree or accept that the Minister, Deputy Foley, carried out this commission because of these tragic missing children cases?

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2024: Tusla - the Child and Family Agency (2 Oct 2025)

James Geoghegan: Is that a "Yes"? I am sorry; I just did not catch that.

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2024: Tusla - the Child and Family Agency (2 Oct 2025)

James Geoghegan: To put the question another way, so often in this State, it is either catastrophe or tragedy that leads to inquiry and change. Would Tusla have carried out this review into these Covid cases but for the tragic circumstances of these missing children?

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2024: Tusla - the Child and Family Agency (2 Oct 2025)

James Geoghegan: Is Tusla worried and anxious that other missing children who have not as yet been identified as missing will now be identified as a result of this review?

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2024: Tusla - the Child and Family Agency (2 Oct 2025)

James Geoghegan: What is frightening to me - I say this as a parent of three kids - and the public is that, only in June, the chair of Tusla, writing in the foreword of the annual report, said that after ten years, the agency had never been better equipped to meet the complex challenges rushing towards it. How does that statement stack up with what is now being carried out? Ms Duggan did not say it...

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2024: Tusla - the Child and Family Agency (2 Oct 2025)

James Geoghegan: I do not mean for this to be provocative but is there an acceptable level of missing children? Surely that is the worst possible outcome when it comes to the care of children, that the children themselves go missing. Is there anything worse?

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2024: Tusla - the Child and Family Agency (2 Oct 2025)

James Geoghegan: How then could it have been said in a report only a couple of months ago that we were in the best place we had been for the past ten years? Ms Duggan sees how it is difficult to understand or reconcile those two statements and the reality of what we are seeing.

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2024: Tusla - the Child and Family Agency (2 Oct 2025)

James Geoghegan: I want to bring Ms Duggan to the four cases the Comptroller and Auditor General highlighted in his report on page 24. Ms Duggan will be familiar with those cases as they have been summarised. They all related to certain events that commenced in 2015. Is that right?

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2024: Tusla - the Child and Family Agency (2 Oct 2025)

James Geoghegan: Did those events relate to missing children?

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2024: Tusla - the Child and Family Agency (2 Oct 2025)

James Geoghegan: What did those events relate to?

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2024: Tusla - the Child and Family Agency (2 Oct 2025)

James Geoghegan: Is Ms Duggan in a position to furnish to this committee those High Court orders in each of those cases?

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2024: Tusla - the Child and Family Agency (2 Oct 2025)

James Geoghegan: May I make that request on behalf of the committee?

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2024: Tusla - the Child and Family Agency (2 Oct 2025)

James Geoghegan: On the third case, I acknowledge what Ms Duggan has said about being bound by a court order - I am not asking her to break that - but it was obviously an extremely serious issue that arose. Tusla carried out an external agency report, which cost it over €400,000. The report was subsequently quashed by the High Court. Somebody went to the High Court and said whatever was in that...

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2024: Tusla - the Child and Family Agency (2 Oct 2025)

James Geoghegan: I just have eight seconds.

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2024: Tusla - the Child and Family Agency (2 Oct 2025)

James Geoghegan: For the avoidance of all doubt, there are no circumstances in which Ms Duggan can say, regarding any of the orders or settlement agreements she was a participant in for these four cases, anything more than that these were service issues. Is that the absolute maximum she is permitted to tell the committee about those cases? She cannot say anything more than "service issues".

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2024: Tusla - the Child and Family Agency (2 Oct 2025)

James Geoghegan: That is in respect of all four cases.

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2024: Tusla - the Child and Family Agency (2 Oct 2025)

James Geoghegan: I will follow on from the Chair's line of questioning. Am I to take it from what Ms Duggan said that the reason Tusla has not reached the target of 110 special care beds is because there is a new obligation in respect of 528 children in IPAS accommodation?

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2024: Tusla - the Child and Family Agency (2 Oct 2025)

James Geoghegan: I appreciate that Ms Duggan is going to put on notice, in respect of all the four parties, her intent to provide to this committee the court orders in those four cases. That is if I understand what has been said here correctly. Ms Duggan mentioned the 15 cases that were settled this year. In passing, she said they were not to staff. Am I to take it that what she meant is that the four...