David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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Question 301: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Health and Children the position regarding the nation's children reports that have been produced as promised under the National Children's Strategy launched in 1990; the publication date of the next such report; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [30747/05]

Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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The national children's strategy, Our Children — Their Lives, was published in 2000. The strategy, rooted in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, is a cross-Government response to improving children's lives and was developed with the assistance of NGOs and academics. Ireland is one of the few countries in the world with such a strategy. The national children's office, NCO, was set up to drive implementation of the strategy and to ensure better co-ordination of services for children. The NCO has become a centre of excellence in children and young people's participation and children's research, the two areas for which it has lead responsibility. It has also been innovative in developing policies that meet the needs of children and in finding solutions where better co-ordination is required.

One of the commitments in the strategy is the production of a state of the nation's children report biannually under the aegis of the Minister of State with responsibility for children. The research team within the NCO have been actively advancing the development of the report. To date, work has focused on the development of an agreed set of national child well-being indicators, which were published in June 2005. A multi-stage incremental approach was taken to the development indicator set and there were four main components. These included a background review of indicators sets in use elsewhere and the compilation of an inventory of key indicators, domains and indicator selection criteria; a feasibility study of the availability of national statistics to construct the indicators identified in the previous step; a study on children's understandings of well-being; and a consensus process referred to as a Delphi technique, where participants on a panel of expertise agreed indicators for use in the Irish context. A full set of the published documents will be made available to the Deputy. Work has commenced on the first state of the nation's report based on these indicators. It is anticipated that the report will be published early in 2006.

Annual progress reports on the national children's strategy are compiled by the National Children's Office on the basis of detailed returns submitted by Departments against each of the actions in the strategy. These reports show the progress that has been made against each action. A copy of the 2002, 2003 and 2004 reports are available on the NCO website at www.nco.ie.