Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is appropriate that you are chairing this debate, Acting Chairperson, given your history and advocacy work.The Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, is very welcome to the House. I listened to the contribution of the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman. I believe that the whole-of-government response is very important. While the children brief is a senior Ministry the issue of children transcend all Departments. The thinking needs to be that each Department takes its responsibilities for children in its area seriously.

I commend my colleague Senator Mary Seery Kearney on the phenomenal work she had done over the past 12 to 18 months in this area. Her own story published in the Irish Examinerover the weekend was just brilliant. We are very lucky to have strong women such as the Minister of State, Senator Seery Kearney and others across the political divide. These are people who are committed to ensuring that the place of the child is enshrined not just as it is now in our Constitution, but to also ensure that it percolates down through every Department.

We had the referendum where the people decided to enshrine in our Constitution the importance of the child, which was an important expression. The people voted at that time and made a clear statement that they were enshrining the rights of the child in our Constitution. They expected their leaders to do what they have to do to ensure every child in the State is protected, supported, nourished and given every opportunity by the State to ensure that they can perform on a level playing pitch and that no child is in any way inferior, and every child is equal and has the opportunity to reach his or her potential. This is critical.

When we consider the Minister of State's predecessors, the first Minister for Children and Youth Affairs in the State was Frances Fitzgerald when she was appointed by former Taoiseach, Enda Kenny ten years ago. It was not easy at that time because a Cabinet Minister for children was something new in this country. The work Frances Fitzgerald did in the early days of her Ministry paved the way for significant change. It would be remiss of us tonight not to recognise the work that she did

The establishment of Tusla was critical. The issue of children needed its own Department, somewhat distinct from the Department of Health. While there are many good people in the Department of Health who do great work, it needed its own agency. For all its faults - and there are many - Tusla certainly is the right model for developing policies to create the type of equal society we all want to see.

However, there are many vulnerable children and many who do not have the opportunities they deserve and should have. It is a blight on all of our houses in the Oireachtas that children are still vulnerable and in dangerous and difficult situations and that children do not have the types of opportunity they deserve and that our society wants for them. We hear horror stories, particularly when dealing with children with disabilities who may be non-verbal. It is a challenging environment, and while 99.9% of the people who care for those children do so in a loving way and ensure they are protected and minded, but, unfortunately, there is another small percentage who do not. As a society, we need the ambition whereby 100% of our children are safe, and that we as a society know that 100% of our children are safe.