Maria Corrigan (Fianna Fail)

I tried to intervene on yesterday's Order of Business in respect of a point made by Senator Norris about the number of missing children. I support the call for the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform to come before the House. In respect of the children to whom Senator Norris referred, over 300 children in the care of the HSE have gone missing in the past few years. They are unaccompanied minors who have arrived alone in Ireland from other countries. As such, they are particularly vulnerable as there is no one to advocate on their behalf or seek information from the Garda as to how the search for them is going, presuming such a search is ongoing.

It is suspected that some of these children leave the care of the HSE to be reunited with their families who are in Ireland. However, it is also suspected that some have been trafficked into Ireland and then exploited. I welcome the extension of the inspectorate to residential accommodation for unaccompanied minors but I would like to see the Minister come before the House to specifically address the need for a report on how many children are missing, the exact steps being taken by the HSE and the Garda to locate them, the criteria by which the children are permitted to reunite with people who come forward to claim a family connection and for that criteria to be altered so that reunification does not take place simply on the basis of consistent stories but on the basis of a much more verifiable link.