Catherine Ardagh (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Yes, Keith Burke. My apologies. When children are placed in foster care they are essentially placed in the care of the State through the mechanism of the HSE. Those children are the most vulnerable children in the State and are due the best protection and safeguards the State can afford. The children in Galway were cruelly let down by the State, not 70 years ago, but in the past two decades. How did we allow that to prevail under our watch? There must be an independent investigation into how the HSE handled the case from the date of the initial allegation made by this lady, to date.

There are serious questions to be answered regarding the placement and safeguarding of children in the State. We learned recently in a report into foster services in Dublin South-Central that families were not vetted and in some cases no checks had been carried out for a period of three years. Now we do not need to imagine the damage that can be caused in a three-year period, as the case highlighted on "Prime Time" last night shows exactly the result of such negligence and neglect of children.

Can the Minister be sure that adequate resources are given to Tusla to deal with child protection matters? Do we have enough social workers? Do the social workers have adequate support to deal with their caseload? Do foster families, the majority of whom do fantastic work, have adequate support? Clearly, confidence in the system is diminishing if it is not gone absolutely. What radical changes are going to be made to ensure this does not happen again? The Minister needs to come to the House to address this matter.

The second issue I wish to raise relates to tracker mortgages. I commend the work of the Central Bank today and Members of the Oireachtas, including my own colleagues, Deputy Michael McGrath and Deputy John McGuinness, who have kept the heat on the banks to ensure that those who had their tracker mortgage rates wrongly removed were compensated. I have learned today that a further 3,400 customers have been identified by the Central Bank, bringing the total number of customers affected to 37,100. Many of those people have been compensated and some of the compensation packages have been fair while others have not. I ask the Minister for Finance to ensure the banks implicated compensate fairly and expeditiously those who were wrongly denied their tracker rate.

The third issue I wish to raise relates to the increase in fees for certain courses in Kylemore College, which is run by the City of Dublin Education and Training Board. We have seen increases of 50% for certain courses and those fees cannot be justified where incomes have not been increased on a commensurate level. No forewarning was given to many of the students who were given one month's notice to come up with the extra fees. Ultimately, that is not fair. I call on the Minister for Education and Skills to come to the House to explain why the increases at Kylemore College have been introduced.