Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. Fianna Fáil welcomes the Bill. It is a step in the right direction towards the goal of a legal entitlement to aftercare services for all young people leaving care. The Bill imposes a statutory duty on Tusla to prepare an aftercare plan for such young people. However, we regard this only as a first step. The Department cannot use the legislation as a ruse to distract from the wider issue of adequate service planning for aftercare. It is welcome that Tusla has been given a legal obligation to provide young people with an aftercare plan, but we have some concerns, in that the Bill does not go far enough in obliging Tusla to put a full service framework and necessary resources for aftercare in place. It gives Tusla the "as resources allow" opt-out clause in section 8. Therefore, the Bill will not oblige the organisation to put in place fully resourced aftercare plans that are tailored to the individual needs of all vulnerable people leaving care.

The debate on the Bill allows us to discuss a related issue, that is, who has statutory responsibility for homeless young people and children. Tusla has no statutory duty to provide all children in emergency accommodation with in-reach plans that would ensure practical access to education, recreation, health and social services. The Bill presents an opportunity to oblige the agency in this regard so as to co-ordinate services for families in emergency accommodation and reduce the risk of long-term damage on a child's upbringing and development that might result from a period of homelessness.

In the context of aftercare plans and services for young care leavers, it is essentially to safeguard these vulnerable people who lack the traditional supports on which young adults fall back. Research conducted on permanent care by Empowering People in Care, EPIC, to which the Minister referred, and others has shown that young care leavers are more likely to leave State care with poor coping mechanisms, poor educations, poor life skills and a lack of support and friendships, which leaves them more at risk of feeling isolated, suffering mental health problems, engaging in risky behaviour, self-harm or suicide and becoming young parents. Between 450 and 500 young people leave care annually upon turning 18 years of age. Last year, 1,698 18 to 23 year olds were in aftercare. Of these, an impressive 56% were in full-time education.

While the Bill obliges Tusla to provide an aftercare plan, it gives the organisation an opt-out clause. From my experience in the House down the years, "as resources allow" is an opt-out for Governments of all colours because it places no legal obligation on the State to provide those resources. It is a worrying and vague opt-out clause and undermines all other provisions in the Bill, including Tusla's statutory obligation to provide an individually tailored aftercare plan to all young people leaving care.

Currently, Tusla has a statutory obligation to investigate all child protection and abuse claims in a timely manner. Last Monday, however, the Ombudsman for Children, Dr. Niall Muldoon, revealed serious deficits in protection and care systems for children administered by Tusla. In his audit, Dr. Muldoon found that Tusla had managed to deal with just one fifth of all reports of child abuse in a timely manner last year. By any measure, this is a gross systems failure on the part of the Minister's Department and Tusla's management. Tusla was set up with the purpose of strengthening the child protection system, but it is failing significantly to investigate child abuse claims immediately. The new agency's failures to protect vulnerable young people is widespread across its service remit, with the ombudsman making the appalling disclosure that children with mental health issues were still being accommodated in adult psychiatric wards. Dr. Muldoon found that, due to bed shortages, many of these children in distressful situations were simply being put on suicide watch instead of being given the care, compassion and specialist treatment that they required. The opt-out clause will not oblige the organisation to put in a place a fully resourced aftercare plan, which is the thrust of the Bill.

We have concerns about whether Tusla will be able to implement the Bill.Giving Tusla a statutory remit, we suggest, is not the same as putting in place a fully resourced system of aftercare and supports for all young people leaving care. It cannot be denied that since its inception Tusla has been grossly underfunded as a service organisation. We welcome the additional funding in budget 2016, and I applaud the Minister for that. Despite the somewhat difficult and straitened economic circumstances he managed to get an increase, but is relatively small and it is required for services just to stand still rather than improve. Last year Tusla was at least €18 million short of meeting day-to-day expenditure for the provision of social worker services alone. Other community programmes that receive their budget from Tusla, including family resource centres, school completion programmes, domestic violence community groups and rape crisis groups, including SAFE Ireland and the Rape Crisis Centre, received savage cuts last again this year.

It also remains to be seen whether the relatively small increase to which I referred for a very underfunded organisation will be enough to rectify service gaps in social and child welfare services provided directly by Tusla as well as providing funding for community programmes that are on their knees because of an annual 5% reduction in their budgets since 2012. HSE and Tusla funding for domestic violence services has been cut by 70% since 2012, although it remained the same last year. Funding for the Commission for the Support of Victims of Crimes domestic court accompaniment service has been reduced by 26% since 2012. Support agency funding for counselling services has also been reduced by 47% since the Government took office.

Funding required to support these services is tiny compared with the protection and solace they offer to women and children in difficult situations. The same happened under previous Governments. For some strange reason, when it comes to budget time, a sum of money is taken out of the system which, if it were allowed to stay, would help a large number of organisations and individuals. When one tots up the figures, a measly few million euro is involved. I am sure the Minister, in fighting the good fight for an increased budget, has probably used those arguments. It would be interesting to hear his comments.

It is unclear which organisation has responsibility for the 1,600 children currently living in emergency homeless accommodation. It is shocking that Tusla does not have a statutory remit to co-ordinate care and in-reach plans for these children. There are currently ten homeless families with children for every 100,000 people in Ireland. By comparison, there are only three homeless families for every 100,000 people in England. It is shocking that Tusla does not bear any special statutory responsibility for putting in place in-reach plans to promote normal development and reduce the risk to the welfare of children in emergency homeless accommodation.

The response of the Minister effectively denied that his Department has any responsibility to children who are homeless, in that he stated, "Young people who are homeless, either singly or as part of a family unit, and not falling within this category, are the responsibility of the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government and local authorities." I suggest Tusla should be taking a lead and front-line role in safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children. This Bill is an opportunity to oblige the agency to put in place in-reach plans for co-ordinating and integrating services for vulnerable homeless families, as well as managing and reducing the risks to ensure a period of homelessness does not have a long-term and damaging effect on a child's upbringing and development. Overall, we welcome the Bill as a first step in the right direction, but there are inherent flaws in it, in particular relating to the "as resources allow" portion of section 8.