Paschal Donohoe (Fine Gael)

I thank the Labour Party for moving the motion. I also thank the Minister of State for his contribution.

When discussing such a difficult and at times sad subject, it is important to place the huge number of statistics and facts to which people refer in the context of the individual experiences we, as public representatives, have had with people who have been touched by the blight of child poverty. I wish to refer to three types of experience I have had on a regular basis within my constituency. I am absolutely furious that there are people in my constituency, where I make my home, who have been affected by the matters to which I am about to refer.

The first of these experiences relates in particular to some of the inner city areas of my constituency. I live, work, shop and spend time in my constituency and I sometimes come across people who are clearly incapacitated as a result of taking drugs or alcohol and who are wheeling children in buggies. These individuals are wheeling their poor children around areas of my city, near my home, at a time when they are in no position to take care of themselves never mind their offspring.

The second experience to which I wish to refer relates to young children who, when I ask them where they reside, state they live in bed and breakfast establishments or hostels. I often ask them how long they have lived in these places and they indicate that they have done so for a couple of months. They sometimes say they were obliged to move there because they did not feel safe or were of the view that they would not be cared for or respected in the establishment in which they previously resided. I am aware of the establishments to which they refer. These children are 14, 15 or 16 years of age. Their peers live in the kind of conditions in which I hope to raise my children and their main concerns relate to whether they will have enough money to allow them to go out with their friends or to the kind of comments being made about them by those friends on the Bebo website.

The final experience I wish to outline is one which, thank God, I come across less frequently. I refer to children I have met who are in care. The vast majority of the people who provide such care have nothing but the best of intentions. Nonetheless, I meet children who have been taken from family circumstances that are extremely difficult and who, in their own best interests, have been placed in care. At times, such care is delivered in institutions and some of the children involved flee from them. They are what we euphemistically refer to as "missing" children. I have met some of these individuals and the statistics so often put forward in respect of this do not capture the essence of their tragic plight or give testimony to the lives they lead.

I am deeply aware of the economic difficulties we face and have spent a great deal of time discussing them in the House. I have also spent a great deal of time trying to be reasonable with regard to these difficulties, trying to understand what caused them and trying to make constructive proposals in respect of what should be done differently. This is one matter about which we should be unreasonable. We should not state that we are cognisant of the economic difficulties that exist and that, therefore, we should not make particular demands. We should be unreasonable and state that further action must be taken.

Before becoming a Senator, I worked in business. If I had approached a manager and referred to the amount of money I had spent and the increased budgets at my disposal, he or she would have looked at me as if I were mad. People are only interested in the results one can deliver. If one is operating in an environment where budgets have been reduced, one must make the money that is available work harder. One must also be willing to ask difficult questions about those who are spending that money and the effect it is having in the areas at which it is targeted.

I wish to offer four examples with regard to what we should be doing differently. The first of these, of which I had first-hand experience approximately one year ago, relates to children leaving primary school and moving to secondary school. I am not aware of any system in place to ascertain whether a child who leaves a school in Phibsborough, for instance, starts a secondary school in locality. Under such a system a warning bell would ring if a child did not start one of the local secondary schools causing someone in authority to ask where the child in question had gone. Would such a system be complicated or costly? It is not a question of money but of will. We should take this issue more seriously and act to address it.

I am convinced the money spent on care for vulnerable children could be better spent. The expenditure of such funds should be subject to an audit, especially in the current circumstances, to ascertain whether they are being well spent and whether they could be spent more creatively to deliver similar or better results.

I will focus my remarks on the issue of parental leave for fathers. Some fathers in some of the families under discussion could and should do more for their children. Before criticising these fathers, however, we must first give them an opportunity to give more time and love to their children. We need to increase the time available to fathers to spend with their children in early childhood. When my children were born, I had one week of additional leave. If parental leave for fathers were increased by a few weeks or perhaps one month, it would make a major difference in this area.

In the short time remaining to me, I propose to make a number of suggestions regarding the Health Service Executive. I am sick of the HSE being blamed for all the ills and woes of this country. The organisation was created by and is accountable to politicians. We must face up to the fact that we have asked it to do too much. It must run hospitals, work with doctors, operate the social care system, provide child care services and perform 1,000 other functions. I am not aware of a single company worldwide, not to speak of a public sector organisation, which has been asked to do so much.

The Health Service Executive is not designed to deal with the issue of vulnerable and impoverished children. It is not up to the job because it is being asked to do too much. The services the HSE provides for children with special needs should be transferred to another body charged with prevention. This would ensure the services provided by the HSE are not required in the first instance. These are the types of issues we need to address and I hope to hear further suggestions and examples of similar thinking in this debate.