Maria Corrigan (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the response of the Minister of State. In my opening comments I welcomed all the advances and the new steps which had been taken. However, I am still concerned that we still do not know for sure what has happened to each of the 424 children concerned. As long as even one child is missing, we need to satisfy ourselves that he or she is safe. I take the Minister of State's point that anybody with information should contact the Garda missing persons bureau. Perhaps there is a dedicated telephone number and publicising it may benefit everybody, as there are others who go missing.

The children in question are unaccompanied and do not have a specific advocate who is independent of the service to follow up on their behalf. I ask the Minister of State to give consideration to giving the Ombudsman for Children specific responsibility to advocate on behalf of missing children, with the names of children who go missing being notified to it. That office could then have responsibility for advocating, on a regular and consistent basis, with the HSE and the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform to track investigations to find missing children.