Barry Andrews (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

There is no question that guardians provide a great service. In fact, Barnardo's provides almost all of the guardians; therefore, one would expect it to be positive about the provision of the service. The Senator said guardians ad litem were appointed in 50% of cases, but that is not the case in respect of special care, in which a guardian ad litem is always appointed where an application is made. In other cases the figure of 50% is probably correct. The courts have discretion in this regard.

Judge Gibbons is a distinguished and dedicated judge who has done great work in the area of child care and I agree with his view on guardians. Last year the Children Acts Advisory Board launched a guidance document on guardians ad litem and we undertook at the time to see how the guidance would work. In the Ryan report implementation plan I undertook to consult my ministerial colleagues on regulating the area. One of the unusual aspects is that the HSE pays for guardians ad litem but opposes them in court, in a manner of speaking, although we are trying to achieve a non-adversarial context for special care orders.

Questions arise as to how the sector will be regulated, where the work will be done and who will pay the guardians. I am working on these as we speak. I do not want to make any changes in legislation until I have completed that work. I indicated I would do this and intend to complete the work as soon as possible, probably within the next couple of months, in order that we can have some indication of where we will be going. Until such time as I have had an opportunity to assess the impact of the guidelines which were launched in May last year, I will not be accepting amendments in this regard. As I said, my information is that in all special care applications children are represented by guardians ad litem. We are only dealing with special care today.