Joint Committee on Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth debate -
Tuesday, 2 Jul 2024

We have received apologies from Senator Ned O'Sullivan. Senator Eileen Flynn is joining us today instead of Senator Ruane, and she is very welcome. Our agenda item is a discussion on the Ombudsman for Children's 2023 annual report, entitled Uncertain Times. From the Office of the Ombudsman for Children we have Dr. Niall Muldoon, Ombudsman for Children, Ms Nuala Ward, director of investigations, and Ms Aoife Carragher, head of communications. They are all very welcome to this meeting.

I will go through the normal housekeeping matters. For anyone joining us through Teams, the chat function is only to let us know of any urgent matters rather than making any general comments or statements. I remind our members of the constitutional requirement that they must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex to participate in public meetings. I will not permit a member to participate where they are not adhering to this constitutional requirement. If members are joining us through Teams, before they make their contribution, could members please confirm that they are on the grounds of the Leinster House campus.

In respect of parliamentary privilege, in advance of inviting those present to deliver their opening statements, I advise witnesses that the evidence given by witnesses physically present or who give evidence from within the parliamentary precincts is protected pursuant to both the Constitution and statute by absolute privilege. Witnesses and members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable, or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if a witness or member's statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative they comply with any such direction.

We have our normal questions and answers after the opening statements. I will hand over to Dr. Muldoon for his opening statement.

I thank the Chair and the committee for inviting us to discuss Uncertain Times, the annual report for 2023 of the Office of the Ombudsman for Children. I am joined by Ms Nuala Ward, director of investigations, and Ms Aoife Carragher, head of communications. Our office is celebrating our 20th anniversary this year. We were established in 2004 by the Ombudsman for Children Act 2002. The office is an independent statutory body with two main duties, namely, to deal with complaints made by, or on behalf of, children about the actions of public organisations, and to promote the rights and welfare of children under 18 living in Ireland.

In 2023, our office received 1,790 complaints and we delivered rights education workshops to 2,090 children and students. Education was again the most complained about issue in 2023, with 40% of complaints relating to education. These complaints were about access to school places, handling of bullying complaints, school transport, the State Examinations Commission and access to complaint procedures within schools. Health and Tusla were each the subject of 23% of our complaints. Health complaints were about services within hospitals, CAMHS, children’s disability network teams and HSE-funded services providing supports for children. Complaints about Tusla, the Child and Family Agency, included complaints about children living in residential care and secure care, interagency work between services, complaint processes and access to interventions and supports provided by the agency. Our office continues to receive complaints from children and families living in direct provision and from people seeking passport services. While our office does not have the remit to examine complaints about early learning settings, such as crèches, Montessori and preschools, it is significant that 4% of the overall contacts or complaints to our office were about these settings. This is an area where there is no independent complaint pathway available and something that needs to be addressed.

We noted in 2023 that while the number of complaints has not grown, we are seeing an increase in the complexity of the complaints coming to us, with one in five relating to multiple agencies. Uncertain Times also spotlights particular systemic issues that we believe are impacting children’s ability to fully enjoy their rights. These include the unequal access to transition year for all students, children being in special care for too long due to a lack of step-down places, and teenagers at risk.

A cohort of teenagers in Irish society are harming themselves, their families and communities. These are vulnerable children who are often both criminally or sexually exploited. Many have left school without qualifications. Their behaviour may well be shaped by traumatic events in their childhoods such as death, imprisonment of a parent, addiction, separation and poverty. This may also be compounded by intellectual disabilities, mental health problems or their own addictions.

In 2023 we published Ivy’s case, which once again highlighted the ongoing issues with delays for children waiting for scoliosis surgeries, something we highlighted originally in 2017. We also completed a special report on direct provision, first reported in 2021, and the Nowhere to Turn report, a follow up to Jack's case, which we published in 2020, detailing the cases of children left in hospital by parents who could not secure the services from the State and supports needed to care for them.

I very much welcome the opportunity to appear before this committee again to discuss the OCO's annual report for 2023. However, I feel compelled to use this platform to express my frustration and disappointment about the lack of progress on a number of issues affecting children. As ombudsman, it is my duty to advocate on behalf of children and point out where their rights have been compromised. After almost ten years in this role, I find myself listing too many of the same issues over and over with no progress and even regression to show for the passing of time. Some of these recurring issues include mental health services for children, school places for children with additional needs, services to follow the assessments of needs, long waiting lists for children needing lifesaving spinal surgeries and the profound adverse impact on children growing up in transitory and insecure accommodation, such as homeless hubs, hotels and bed and breakfasts. How many times must I appear before this and other committees calling for the same changes in the best interests of children?

Uncertain Times is the title of our annual report for 2023, as too many children are facing uncertainty in the everyday lives. Children are fighting for Government’s attention and our most vulnerable children are not coming out on top of that fight. Legislation impacting children has not progressed as planned. We were promised, but are still waiting for the review of the Mental Health Act to be published. The student and parent charter has not been finalised within the Department of Education. While the review of the Child Care Act 1991 is under way, and has been for six or seven years, we hope that in its final iteration, it fully addresses the needs of children.

In July 2023, I was honoured to act as an adviser to the Mental Health Commission in the review of national child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, carried out by Dr. Susan Finnerty. The review told us at that time that the commission cannot provide an assurance to all parents in Ireland that their children have access to a safe, effective and evidence-based mental health service. If these children are not safe, then they are at risk. I call for a radical and brave reimagining of our mental health services for children.

The review recommended the regulation of CAMHS, a call repeated in the Mental Health Commission annual report, published only last week, in June 2024. No progress has been made on that recommendation in the past 12 months. Unfortunately that is worth repeating - no progress has been made on that recommendation in the past 12 months. As the committee can see, there is much to be done to protect the rights of children in Ireland and as this Government nears its end, it is vital that these issues are at the forefront of thinking for the future.

I want to finish on a more uplifting note and mention the OCO’s child talks event, which we host every year to mark World Children’s Day. In 2023, we hosted our largest event, welcoming 1,000 children to the Helix and streaming into many classrooms across the country. This is a special event where inspirational young speakers talk about issues with which they identify, such as vaping, identity, neurodiversity and much more, all in their own words.

In July 2023, over 100 children attended a children’s conference hosted and facilitated by our youth advisory panel. Children came from all over Ireland to consider the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s concluding observations to the Irish State and to give their views on what needed to be prioritised. Our youth advisory panel was also recently invited to appear before this committee and we are so proud of the contributions they made on AI and discrimination at that time. We thank the committee for that invitation.

These children remind us what it is all about and why we must do everything we can to provide the services and supports children in Ireland need to reach their potential. Again I thank the committee for the invitation to speak. We are happy to answer members' questions.

First, I sincerely thank the ombudsman's office for being an extraordinary voice for children all of the time. I had cause in recent weeks to defend its honour in the context of the AHR Bill, but I noted that it is well able to speak up for itself. There needs to be a context. Of course, the ombudsman's office sees the worst of everything. There are many children who live very happy lives in our country. We need to note that because when we read the report, it is a very bleak picture of situations and what needs to be done. Certainly, I take it with me in the writing of manifestos and what can actually be put in place.

When the office has so many complaints, can Dr. Muldoon give us an idea of resolution? Of the 1,700 or so, where did they all go? We see the case studies and we see the stories. Can Dr. Muldoon talk about those frustrations?

First, I am very happy to say that Ireland is a really good place for many children to grow up in. I have said before that we have it right for about 90% of our children. We have a really good system that works well, but for those children who are not in the normal boxes and require slight flexibility, there are problems.

As regards the complaints, and I will ask Ms Ward to comment, of the 1,790, we would tend to try to resolve 80% of complaints in the first five to six weeks. It is usually fairly quick. Usually we can sort them out ourselves in the first contact we make with the public service, whether it is a school or a hospital. They tend to say, "Okay, we have an issue and we will sort it out as quickly as we can". That is where we want to go. Every ombudsman's target is local resolution as quickly as possible.

There are more difficult cases that we have to deal with that might lead to a preliminary inquiry. There are very serious cases that are more complex altogether and those result in investigations. In a standard year, ten to 12 cases will go to investigation. It is a really small percentage. We want to resolve these as quickly as possible. That is where we go to at that stage. Ms Ward may want to add to that.

That is exactly it. We live and die by the principle of the best interests of the child. The best interests of the child is to get things fixed quickly. In fairness to most of the adults we reach out to, be they school principals or professional social workers, when we explain to them the impact on the child, what is going on in that child's life and the impact it is having on the family, a lot of the time they will sit up and say, "Okay, tell us what we need to do and we will reach out to the family". Sometimes it is simply about communication and information sharing and, therefore, it is really important that we try to fix things first because investigations are very intense. When we go to investigations the one thing, and this is a key theme Dr. Muldoon has reiterated, is for the system to learn. We cannot keep going back and bringing up the same case again and again. When we do investigations, our recommendations are systemic in nature and are supposed to help all children who may be affected by that issue. That is why we find them incredibly important and most of the time we find that services take our recommendations seriously.

At a very senior level, we meet with the CEOs of the HSE and Tusla and with chief operations officers. If there are systemic issues that we have already investigated and new cases are coming into us, we will put them at their door and tell them that we have already investigated them and they need to fix them for those children. At local level, obviously, my team can deal with people on the ground, the decision makers. They are the most important people. We will go up the line until we get it resolved and if that means going to the very top, we will go to the very top. We use our authority with great care and great respect to the people on the ground.

However, our role is to advocate for children when something has gone wrong for them by services. We will use that to the most senior level that is appropriate to get things fixed.

I wish to add to that. We invested a lot of time in trying to help organisations and agencies to do complaints better. We have a complaint handling leaflet which we engage with. We have brought it to teacher conferences. We bring it to other places. We have engaged with the HSE and Tusla on it so that we can help to make it as easy as possible for them to handle a complaint on the ground so that they do not have to come to us. We are trying to prevent all the time as well.

Education was the most complained-about issue last year with 40% of complaints relating to education, access to school places, bullying, school transport, the State Examinations Commission and access to complaints procedures in schools. What are the procedures to make complaints about education? Is there a resolution in these cases? For example, if a board of management decided to change policy in a school, what would be the procedure for that? The witnesses might come back to me on that.

Some 23% of the health complaints were about services within hospitals, CAMHS, children's disability network teams, and HSE-funded services providing supports for children. This is a lot. Do the witnesses feel enough is being done correctly? Is it staffing? We have the CDNT in Carlow and there are so many concerns because there are no staff. We have no psychologist and, would you believe, no one to answer the phones to get back to the parents. How do we try to sort these issues, for the staff as well? I feel for the staff and for the parents and the children.

Will the witnesses tell us more about the 4% of complaints about early learning settings and, again, the issues with access?

Regarding the Internet and phones, what is the risk with teenagers? As the witnesses said, more teenagers are harming themselves, their families and communities.

Other issues the witnesses highlighted were mental health services for children, school places for children with additional needs, services to follow assessments of needs, long waiting lists for children awaiting life-saving spinal surgeries and other issues I have raised, as have the witnesses. How do we try to sort this? What happens next? What do the witnesses believe we can do to try to find a way to help this?

The report calls for a radical and brave reimagination of our mental health services for children. Again, will the witnesses speak to what we can do? These issues come up at our clinics daily, from parents, families and relations. It is tough for staff, for families and for the children. We really need to find more solutions.

I thank the witnesses. I am sorry if these questions were asked but I was in the Dáil and have just come in.

I thank Deputy Murnane O'Connor. With regard to education, she asked what the procedure is if a board of management changes processes within a school. An area we had hoped would work out much better than it has is the student-parent charter, or the school community charter as it is now being called, which would have provided for more engagement between students, parents and the whole school community to agree processes for procedures, plans and targets for the school. That was the whole idea of the new charter. That was meant to bring the whole school community closer together so that parents did not feel that processes and procedures were being imposed on the school and they had no say in it. That has not come to fruition yet. At the moment the procedure would be that if parents are not happy, they have to complain to the school, to the board of management. If they are not happy with how the complaint is dealt with, they can come to us. We would much rather prevent that happening. That is where the student charter, the whole community charter, needs to come into being. We were promised it would happen in this legislative term. It is to be hoped there might be still a little bit of time left to make that happen. That would result in a situation in which parents and students would have a voice in the whole school, and that is the way it needs to be because that is how you create co-operation, collaboration, communication and things become more "us" rather than "them" imposing on us. That is the future.

In regard to the HSE, staffing and such matters, I get frustrated at this time with the constant of the moratorium. We are one of the richest countries in Europe. We are well up there in the world, yet we are being told we have to tighten our belt all the time in the places where children are vulnerable. That is the piece I get very cross and frustrated about. I am now ten years in this job. We have known we have needed psychologists and more social workers since then. We should be well down that path. We should be perhaps 10% or 20% short, but at the moment we are between 50% and 70% short in our staffing levels in certain places. We need to start moving forward on that soon. The moratorium is very unfortunate at a time when we seem to have financial surpluses. The choices that are being made are not for the children. That is the piece we said at the top of Uncertain Times. Children are fighting for the attention of the Government and the Government is saying we cannot deal with children because we have to deal with homelessness, housing and the cost of living. Children are at the centre of every one of those titles. If we fix it for the child, we fix it for everybody. The lack of staffing within the HSE is a symptom of us not focusing on children. I will come back to early learning. Ms Ward will take that.

The other piece was the mental health service. Radical and brave change is what we needed. What we have is not even tinkering at this point. We hired two new staff members at a higher level to run the child and youth mental health service. That is why I reiterated in the speech that we still have not given regulation to the Mental Health Commission to regulate CAMHS, to inspect it and to be able to follow up, and giving it the resources to do that. That was recommended 18 months ago in the interim report of the Mental Health Commission. It was promised 12 months ago when the final report was issued, and it still has not even been moved forward, never mind actually implemented. That is a very simple and small thing. We also made a number of other recommendations we need, such as the ring-fencing of the children's mental health budget so that we know exactly what we are spending on CAMHS and what we are spending on children within mental health. That is a record I have been repeating for many years and none of those changes has been made. We have been tinkering around the edges of mental health services for children. We saw last week Deputy Cairns saying that within primary care, where we need to move upstream and stop children from going into CAMHS, there is a four-year waiting list in Cork alone. We do not have the national figures for that. We have not done anything for our children in the mental health area. That is a real sadness for me.

Ms Ward will answer the question regarding early learning.

We deliberately included this as a case study for the first year. Members will be fully aware that the State has invested significant moneys, and rightly so, in the early years sector and in private providers. However, they are not within our remit and we believe they should be within our remit, simply by virtue of the fact there has been such massive State investment. Parents have come to us because they wish to make a complaint about something that happened in the early years sector to which the response has been "remove your child", just remove them. There is no recourse or no right to redress because obviously there is no body that independently can take complaints on behalf of parents about their experience of a child in a crèche. We wanted to shine a light on what we think is a deficit in light of State investment in this area. We believe it would be hugely beneficial for families and for children aged up to five, who are most vulnerable, that we be able to aid quality assurance and oversight within that area. That is why we decided to include it. We have asked the Government for this as part of the review of our legislation.

This is a live conversation and topic. A good deal has happened in the committee and YAP Ireland was before it talking about it. We looked back at some of the comments and contributions that group made at that time. What its representatives brought up all the time was education for them and education for their parents and for adults. Belle, one of the young people we had here, was from a larger family. She spoke about how children themselves need to have the tools. It is very important the regulation is there for social media companies and for everyone else but we need to really support children and their parents and families on the education side. That is something we will definitely be pushing within the office.

Dr. Muldoon mentioned it is our 20th anniversary. We are working on a survey.

We have surveyed more than 1,000 children and will be publishing the results shortly. Online safety and education is one of the issues that has really come up for them. They see the online world as part of their everyday world and we have to make that safe for them, as much as we can. That is what they are telling us.

One of the things that stood out for me when we were here with the young people talking to the committee was that one of our youth advisers, who is 16 years of age, was concerned about a younger sibling's access to the Internet. Parents had done everything they possibly could. They had put every single parental safeguard available on the phone but as soon as the child just asked Siri, they could bypass all of the safeguards and get any inappropriate material they wanted. Children are very much aware of the dangers of it.

I am covering for Senator Lynn Ruane today who kindly allowed me to take her place today. I welcome the ombudsman and his colleagues to the committee this afternoon. This report was such an eye-opener for me. When I heard it discussed on a radio programme, I got shivers down my spine. As legislators and Members of the Houses of the Oireachtas, we must do better. It brought to mind for me the No End in Site report that was published three years ago. There has been little or no implementation of the recommendations of that report. At the education committee I brought up the report because it is shocking to think that children in Ireland in 2024 still do not have equal access to very basic rights. They do not have equal access to education, mental health services or to surgery for life-threatening conditions. Children are on waiting lists for years and are reaching young adulthood having accessed little or no services.

I admire Dr. Muldoon. I have been a Member for the past four years and I have crossed paths with him in various committees. I admire the honest communications from Dr. Muldoon and his colleagues over the past four years. When I was reading his opening statement, I could feel his frustration and I heard it today in the contributions of the three witnesses. They are so honest in saying we need to be doing more for our young people. Who is held accountable? The reports are coming out. It is not about the work of the ombudsman. That work is adequate. It is hard telling the truth. Some Government parties may not want to hear it but we are failing our children in the areas of homelessness, mental health, education and so on. Last week Fr. Peter McVerry had a letter published in The Irish Times. The part that really struck me was that the only public service "available to the poor and vulnerable that does not have a waiting list" is prison. That is a stark reflection of today's society. This time next week I will be going to Oberstown where young people are doing prison sentences. I am sure to God that there is no waiting list in the prison service. That might sound funny but we know that instead of access to mental health supports and good education, children from very disadvantaged areas have access to prison services. What kind of society are we living in today?

The Ombudsman for Children's office will be 20 years old this year and, without that office, you can only imagine the hidden truths we would not know about and would not be discussing at committee level today. To be blunt, we know that CAMHS is not fit for purpose but I mean no disrespect to the staff when I say that. The issue is a lack of funding and a lack of implementation by the Government. I agree with Dr. Muldoon that there should be a stand-alone budget for young people's mental health. The programme for Government contains a commitment to a stand-alone budget for Traveller mental health as well. This Government continues to fail people from minority groups, especially children, and it is not held accountable. What is the solution, if there is one? How do we hold the Government to account in the Ireland of 2024? This is going to continue to happen. There is going to be report after report. Again, with no disrespect to the ombudsman because, without his office's reports, we would not have the facts and the truth in front of us, and we need that, we can have all the reports in the world, gathering dust, but unless we implement the recommendations of these reports, then we will continue to fail children, especially poor children and children from minority backgrounds. I would love to hear the witnesses' thoughts on how we combat this. Who is held accountable, in their opinion?

I also sit on the Committee on Disability Matters. Last week the Minister of State with responsibility for special education was before that committee. After four years, I am at the point where I feel I am bouncing my head off a brick wall and I do not know how Dr. Muldoon has done it for ten years. We have the answers but we need the implementation. We need to make sure we protect the future generations of this country. We should be ashamed of ourselves as a very rich country. In the Government, we have so many Ministers and Ministers of State and yet we do not have implementation. We have Ministers with responsibility for children, well-being, education, special education and so on. I could spend the rest of this committee's time naming the Ministers and I still do not know, as a legislator, where the responsibility lies. The ombudsman can come up with solutions and answers, having worked with communities. His office has done some work with people on the halting site in Ballyfermot, for example. We are seeing children who need services being failed and failed but who is held accountable? What can we do to tackle this? We have enough legislation and enough written on paper. Is there action we can take as a committee and as a society?

I thank Senator Flynn for her kind words. We appreciate her coming to join us here today. Who is held accountable is a fantastic question. For me, it is the legislators. As the Senator mentioned, and I referenced it too, we deliberately crafted our statement to show that we followed up Ivy's case in 2023, which we first originally highlighted in 2017. The special report on direct provision was published last year but we first reported in 2021. Nowhere to Turn was a follow-up report on a 2020 case - Jack's case - about children being left in hospital. We follow up, we chase and we get promises. Let us take the scoliosis issue, the Ivy case and the scoliosis report we did in 2017. The Minister, Deputy Donnelly, gave €19 million to CHI on the promise it would bring down the waiting list from four months to lower, but he is now having to audit that. I hold the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, accountable and he is now trying to hold CHI accountable. I do not know where the accountability is going to end but all I know is that the children are losing out every single time. If I had been told in 2017 that we were going to invest €19 million in the hospital, I would have thought that would sort it all out. That is the reason we did the report. We had been getting these complaints since 2012, when I joined the office, but we could not do anything.

We asked for a five-year plan to sort it out. We were not trying to force anyone to fix it quickly but asking that it be fixed so that it never has to come up again. That is what 2017 was about. They spent 18 months working on it, brought in the parents and made it work. They got to a certain stage where there was a co-produced plan but it fell down again because CHI and the parents fell out and it did not get followed through. The Minister at that time, whoever it was, did not follow through at different stages.

Who is held accountable? It is the Department and the Government. What I keep hearing at different levels and at different stages, regardless of the issue, is that, ultimately, it comes down to finance. If people are going to fight then instead of fighting my office and fighting children and their parents in the courts, they should fight the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform. Let them make that the fight they want to take on as politicians and Ministers. They are spending too much time and energy fighting parents who are only looking out for the best interests of their child instead of fighting internally, standing up for their Departments and standing up for the children they serve.

Who are the customers here? The customers are the children. If I am the Department of Education, the customer is not the unions, it is not the teachers, it is not the boards of management, it is not even the parents, it is the child I serve. Too many politicians and high-level civil servants have lost sight of that and that is what we need to get to. We need to get back to that, and if we are coming into a new Government and if anybody is creating manifestos and asking what we want to do, we want to see a Civil Service, public service and political service that works on behalf of their customer, which is, from our point of view, the child.

The Minister for children's remit is about five different remits as well as children. There should be one allocated person as Minister for children who deals with oversight of budgets for health, education and accommodation. As we talk about children, there are children in hotel rooms across the island who are hungry and without a place to stay. That includes children from the Traveller community, black and brown children and disabled children. We are failing young people with disabilities in this country and it is appalling. I thank Dr. Muldoon for his work but, as a committee, it is important we listen to him today, bring back the recommendations and try to push for implementation.

I welcome all our guests. There is a lot of respect in these Houses for their office and the work they all do. Theirs is a voice such that, when they speak, we should really be listening. For me, that was highlighted by the very positive engagement we had with the youth advisory panel. The witnesses are quite right with their title. These are uncertain times. I look at the recent NYCI study as well which echoes that uncertainty and sense of foreboding that young people feel. Certainly, the young people from the youth advisory panel who appeared before the committee were an absolute breath of fresh air. They were a wonderful challenge to us and were wonderful to have in. They reflect very well on the ombudsman's office, as does this and the other reports it does and the other work it does in supporting parents.

I want to go back to some of the stuff the witnesses were talking about with Senator Seery Kearney regarding prevention, because ultimately prevention is better than the cure. When 40% of complaints relate to education year in, year out, it speaks to the fact the Department of Education is not learning the lesson. I know the ombudsman has said he goes to the top as far as he can. Does anyone ever come to him proactively? Does the ombudsman ever get proactive engagement from the HSE or the Department of Education? He mentioned in his opening statement about the rights workshops the office does with young people. It sounds to me like he needs to be doing them with the decision-makers and the civil servants. Perhaps, in the new Dáil term, the ombudsman could have a session with newly elected TDs, and I am sure many older elected TDs would sneak into that one as well. That could be very useful. Is there any sort of proactive, positive engagement from the organisations I referred to?

When we talk about how there are many agencies and the issues affecting children cut across many agencies, as from the last conversation but also from the report, where one in five is dealing with multiple agencies, what comes to mind when the ombudsman talks about going to the top and the accountability piece is the child poverty unit within the Department of the Taoiseach. Has there been positive engagement by the ombudsman's office with that unit? If those in that unit are, in a way, trying to cut through the silos and pull people together, then their listening to the ombudsman's experience on the front line is essential.

Going to the top is going to the Cabinet and going to an Taoiseach. That is part of our role and no doubt everyone on this side would be more than happy to represent the ombudsman's views, but it would certainly benefit his office to be directly plugged into that and I hope that is happening. I will leave it there for the minute. The witnesses' views on those issues would be most welcome.

I thank the Deputy. On the certainty and the sense of foreboding, it does clearly define the way some children would sense their lives. When we talk about transitory and unstable accommodation, we estimate between 30,000 to 35,000 are in that situation, between Ukrainian refugees, direct provision, homelessness and the Traveller situation. That is a lot of children in uncertainty and we know what certainty gives to children. It gives them security and stability. It is important we try to fix that.

On prevention, my background is psychology and I always use the term, and have used it with the Department of Education and other places, that self reflection should lead to self correction. We are not getting enough of that on a consistent basis. We get good people who do it and some people who do not. It is the same with schools, hospitals and local authorities. Some will do it but it is not a standard practice. Usually, if we find out there is a problem, we will try to fix it as quickly as possible and do not figure out anything after that. Let us move on instead to figuring it out and making sure it does not happen again. Prevention is something we try to move forward and I think they are starting to make changes. Certainly, the Department of Education has started to look at it in a different way and started to learn from things it has done before.

Last year, we proactively did a pilot in which, exactly as the Deputy said, we sent out three papers relating to children's rights. We sent simple, explanatory papers to three different Departments to see what their thoughts were and how they could use them, and we are hoping to do something more with that. We have linked in with the Department of children to do exactly the same thing. It is trying to do a one to one and a half hour training module on children's rights and putting children at the heart of decision-making within different Departments. It is to be hoped we are starting to move in that direction where people would be trained up to understand it and at least know where to find children's rights if they need to engage with the matter across their different Departments. That is hugely important because it has to be self-regulated and self-reflective. It cannot be waiting for us to come with a big-hitting investigation. We have done ten investigations and each one has taken a year and a half to two years. That is not the way to fix a system. A system needs to be self-correcting all the time.

On engagement with the Taoiseach, I have been promised I will have a meeting very soon and it is hoped it will be in the next month or so, if he is listening. I do meet consistently with most of the Ministers in our areas of education, children, health and justice.

To add to that, linking in with the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste, all of the parties and everyone in the Houses is really important to us at the moment considering the time and how everyone is working on their manifestos. We are conscious that we have lots of reports and lots of recommendations and we have tried to pull them together as one cohesive piece to help people like the members when they are working on those things. We have made contact with all the parties and with the leaders to try to provide that and to try to help as much as we can. There are so many asks and there is so much happening now whenever people are working on that kind of thing, and we want to do everything we can to make it as easy as possible and that those recommendations are accessible for people.

On the child poverty and well-being unit in the Department of the Taoiseach, we have been invited, we are participants there and we were twice invited to speak. When we were invited to speak to the stakeholders, we played a very short video from the direct voice of children whom we met from our No End in Site investigation. The reason was that we wanted to grind people down until they could understand what it is like to be a child growing up in poverty. We played the video to hear directly from children what it is like to be ashamed going into school because of the dirt on your shoes or your dress and because of the filth you are living in on the site. We wanted people to really understand that when you are dealing with poverty, you can talk about theory and economics but you have to listen to the deep shame some children experience when they are growing up in poverty. I understand that presentation was very well received and we are asking them again and again to go out and listen to these children and not to get too lost in the theory.

Our second presentation was on teenagers at risk. These are a cohort of children we are really worried about because they are not seen as vulnerable because they are engaging in criminal exploitation, doing the drug dealing and we meet them in Oberstown, but we see them as vulnerable.

They are the children who will end up in prison, or worse. We want the Government to recognise them as vulnerable and take steps to address their needs. That is how we have engaged so far.

I will start by congratulating the ombudsman and all the staff for the 20 years of service they have given us so far. As a typical constituency-based TD the office has been very helpful to me with the work we do, namely, our advocacy on the ground for the very families and children the witnesses are talking about here. I often feel the office of the Ombudsman for Children is an additional tool or resource we have as legislators, especially when we are advocating to State agencies or bodies.

There are a couple of things highlighted in the office's submission and I would like to unpack some of them. Last week we went to Report Stage of the Childcare (Amendment) Bill which will change the inspections around childminding and early years settings. I did not know early learning settings such as crèches, Montessoris and preschools were not under the remit of the office. It is something we as a committee should perhaps take note of. When I am advocating on behalf of a child or family where an incident or series of incidents has occurred we go to Tusla, the Child and Family Agency, there is an inspection regime and the reports are there for everybody to see after the fact. Sometimes they will end up being the subject of litigation or an out-of-court settlement. However, on occasion, one feels that where there is a repetition of - I will use the lightest words I can possibly use - misdemeanours or misbehaviour on the part of operators and those working within crèches, they are never really subjected to the full rigours of the law. I find there is a culture of keeping them open because there is such a shortage of places. The best possible scenario is to keep it open and try to bring it onside with respect to compliance, but it cannot be closed down because that leaves a whole geographical area devoid of a service. Perhaps there should be a role for the office of the ombudsman in respect of how Tusla operates when inspecting early learning settings? Has there been a conversation with the Child and Family Agency about a potential role for the office in that regard?

On that, we have not chatted to the Child and Family Agency. We have chatted to the Department of children. It was unsure as to whether it needed us to come on board or not, but we are certainly engaging with it now. We did a review of our Act and this was one of the lacunae we found in that. We have been engaging with it in the last couple of weeks to move that forward. As the Deputy will understand, we are not looking for a big Bill to create all the changes we want. Sometimes you just look to be opportunistic. If there is a Bill coming through you might be able to do something with it. This one was never offered to us an opportunity, but we are engaging with the Department to try to make it happen. As the Deputy will understand, the reason we were not involved in it was the history of crèches is that they were always private, so it was not relevant to us. It was not a publicly-provided service, but it has now turned around. I am not sure what the percentage is, but there is over €2 billion going into it now, so from our point of view it makes sense we have some sort of engagement with that. As to how that looks, it may or may not be complaint-handling but we want to engage around it.

Dr. Muldoon has hit the nail on the head there, because the State is a big funder now. As a result it has serious skin in the game. I have a little difficulty with a situation where we have Tusla or the Department funding all these schemes and then acting as inspector. I appreciate it is imperfect, but at least there is an inspectorate regime and the legislation is being changed as we speak. There needs to be somebody or an entity like Dr. Muldoon's office that sits on top of that as well, so at least if we are talking about upholding the rights of a child or family there is a mechanism or door they can go through, so I take the point he is making.

I move to the issue of CAMHS and the children's disability network teams. At 8.45 a.m. I had a call with someone employed by a section 39 organisation who was trying to get a readout from me. She was telling me that through her trade union she and her colleagues were now in negotiations in the WRC about pay restoration. They have been made an offer of a paltry 6%, so there still exists this massive disparity in pay between workers doing comparable tasks who are employed by different organisations. They are all de facto employees of the State because they are all price-takers from the State. That is having a massive knock-on effect for the families I represent as well. I pretty much know what the answer is, but I wanted to get the witnesses' perspectives on this. Until we address the inequality in pay between two comparable roles, one being a HSE position and the other a CDNT or primary care team position, we are going to continue to have these service deficits because the HSE is poaching staff and recruitment and retention is a major issue, as is morale. I am wondering whether this is something that has been raised as an issue in the course of the office's conversations with any of the line Departments within its remit.

From our point of view, we have encouraged the Minister for children on a number of occasions to ensure there is no disparity that hampers the provision of services to children. Again, we do not engage with how the Government spends its money, but we know they were equal until the economic crisis. There was no harm in that, no issue with that, nobody had any difficulty, everyone balanced out and we had a much better service at that time. We are now in danger not just of separation between section 38s and the HSE or whatever else is providing these services, because we are moving into private services which could even make it worse. We have seen it in England. We have seen how it pans out when it moves down to only five or six providers, which then have the State over a barrel. They are the ones providing whatever they want and they also cherry-pick the children they provide for. That map has very clearly been laid out within Tusla. When CEO, Bernard Gloster, clearly decided to bring it down from a 60% reliance on private to under 50%. One of the easiest ways to start that is to eliminate that disparity in wages and provide proper funding for State-supported voluntary services. That is how we get back control of the system and the fact it has not happened is extremely frustrating for me and a real kick in the teeth fro the children who need those sorts of services. I certainly have no difficulty in supporting that call for parity.

I thank Dr. Muldoon for that. On school transport, I represent a typical urban-rural constituency and my figures may be wrong but we have the 3.7 km and 4.2 km rules as part of this anachronistic geographical construct for school transport. Until such time as that is done away with and there is a universal service we will continue to have these inequalities. Every year without fail every single one of us in the House deals with families where one child has a concessionary ticket and a sibling does not.

It is the luck of the draw. I am fascinated by the fact that a statistically significant number of the representations made to the Ombudsman for Children's office relate to education, and school transport as a subset of that. I again want to get the perspective of the witnesses - it is important to do so - on whether in the course of their deliberations with the Department observations have been made by Ms Carragher or her colleagues on how school transport operates and what impediments there are to any child or minor by dint of the current scheme that exists. In fairness to the Minister, she has made some changes to costs and in other regards, but all that did was to de facto knock out a lot of the concessionary tickets and put some people further behind again in terms of trying to get on a bus.

Every year without fail we get complaints about the school transport system. There is an absolute rigidity to it. The narrative is that we must treat everyone the same, but that does not mean we treat everyone fairly. Some children need special concession. We need additional support especially for children with special educational needs. We find it very difficult at times to get them to understand the need for a child-centred approach and that sometimes there is a need to be flexible around the edges. That will not break the system. That is one of our key challenges. We have engaged significantly with the school transport section, mostly on clear administrative issues about being transparent in decision-making in terms of the appeals board and suchlike. We cannot underestimate how important school transport is for families. It affects their whole daily lives. Sometimes we wonder if that has got lost in the tick-box system of ticket allocation. School transport is very significant for families.

I might add a point. I am aware that we have had discussions about school places as well. I understand that currently approximately €100,000 a day is spent on taxis in Dublin alone to bring children out of their own area to go to a special needs school. If there was proper planning and those children did not have to be transported, we would create a whole different energy and €500,000 a week would be saved. Forward-thinking and proper planning would make a significant difference to the lives of the children who are affected. School transport is probably the most obvious issue that regularly turns up. We can fix it by allowing ourselves to do things that are different for one family alone and say it is not a precedent and it cannot be copied somewhere else because the circumstances of the family are different. Let us allow ourselves to do that, as it would create a proper child-centred approach within the system.

We have the Digital Services Act and Coimisiún na Meán. The pronunciation depends on the part of the country one is from or what a person's dialect is. We have had very good engagement with the commission on online safety and the inherent risks for children. To be fair, the policing powers that are vested in it are significant. Hopefully, they will be used rigorously. Does the Ombudsman for Children interact with Coimisiún na Meán on the Digital Services Act and other legislation that has come down the track in terms of the protection of children? Do the witnesses sense that the big global companies that are operating in this space are – I am not trying to use loaded language – ticking boxes in regard to child safety and child protection? The reality is often different. There are always workarounds to get past protocols. There was a reference to that earlier. I would love for us to have a most rigid and rigorous regime when it comes to policing social media companies and protecting children. We have no idea what is coming down the line in regard to the harms that are befalling the children of today. We have no clue whatsoever. I do not want to paint a dystopian picture but, as a parent, I am very fearful about the effects. There is all the good that comes with social media but there is a hell of a lot of bad as well. To get to the point, has Dr. Muldoon had engagement with the commission on the role of the Ombudsman for Children and its role and whether there is some symbiosis between the two entities?

We were delighted to see Coimisiún na Meán come into being. We were engaged with the ongoing committee that came together to advise on the establishment of the commission in the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications. We have a member on the committee. I have engaged myself with the commissioner on a number of occasions. We have also advised it on its youth advisory panel. Currently, the youth advisory panel is set at 18 to 25 years but it wants to move down and I am going to help with that as well.

From our point of view, it is fantastic to have the commission there. The legislation is strong and the commission has shown itself to be willing to go after the multinationals where that is needed. Again, we can see the pushback, which is interesting to watch. I read in the business section of a newspaper at the weekend that there are complaints about how rigid we are becoming. It outlined how Europe is starting to make it much more difficult for entrepreneurs and multinationals to do their job and stated that America is much more open, aggressive, entrepreneurial and innovative. It was also stated that innovation might die in Europe because we are trying to regulate. I will take that any day of the week. I would rather lose a few innovators than for children to get caught up. Even with the best will in the world we will always be behind the companies that are innovating but we have got to be strong in the regulation that we set up. Ireland is a real leader in that regard. Coimisiún na Meán has shown itself to be willing and able to do its job. We are going to give it every backing we can. We will probably set up quarterly meetings to engage on children’s issues.

In 2022 I introduced an amendment in the Seanad on changing "child pornography" to "child sexual abuse by materials". It has passed in the Seanad. If we look at the simple wins and the simple acts, they could be done in a matter of a few days. We talk about online safety, yet the answers are there. For my own information going forward, in regard to changing the name, I hope I will be able to quote the Ombudsman for Children as well. It is a no-brainer to me because a child cannot consent to pornography. The question is a silly enough one but I have to ask it so that I can go back and say the Ombudsman for Children said his office would or would not support the call. It is a little step but I believe it is a step in the right direction. Does Dr. Muldoon believe that is the case?

That is the way forward because it has to be classed as child abuse - end of story. Pornography is getting a cachet and is becoming cool in some places and children think it is okay. We must recognise that it is abuse no matter what way one looks at it. No child gives consent to any of that material. That change in terminology is something we would be very happy to support.

I thank Dr. Muldoon. Ms Ward's comments about shame and the shame of living in poverty really struck me. That is a burden in itself. That is such a weight on any child's shoulders. Back in 1998, when I fell on a halting site, I spent years going in and out of hospital with infections because of that one fall. That brings me back to that young person who was ashamed of going to school. Even today, we have such little hope for our young people. I remember saying to Mary Robinson when she was in, that I was once in a refuge with my mother at six years of age. I was born and reared in poverty and I still ended up here, but that is not the case for every single child. People say, if you can see it you can be it.

Many Traveller children and adults would love to be in here as a politician or to be a doctor or a nurse, and it is the same for people from other minority groups. Unfortunately, however, we do not get those opportunities.

This is still very much alive in today's world. Attending this meeting and listening to some of the points that have been made has given me so much food for thought and made me want to keep pushing and chipping away. I think about my children and how I can provide a better life for them by breaking the circle of poverty. It is remarkable to be here, but most important, while I believe in hope, it is about political will. The implementation needs to come from the top down and give a hand up to poor communities and children who have less. Children do not want handouts and neither do mothers and fathers. They want sustainability and that is what we are missing.

I thank the witnesses.

I have one or two points I want to raise. I agree with Deputy Sherlock. I had not realised the point about early learning settings, but when he raised it, it made sense because it is provided mainly privately. Is it the same for community crèches, given they are constituted by a board, or is it different?

I was interested in the point about transition year and the access. Is that to do with finances? One of the major issues we have with the education system is that it seems to differ greatly depending on what school it is and not necessarily even which county, given what we see in some cases with disability services. It is sometimes called a postcode lottery but in my experience of secondary schools, when dealing with constituents in the two counties I represent, it varies greatly. There is a terrible culture in some schools, which we probably need to call out more, whereby they feel they can do what they like and can operate on their own. In the case of some of the policies I have heard described, we would have to wonder how they become a policy. Particularly in the context of transition year, will the witnesses expand on that and the types of complaints? The cost of transition year is an issue that arises frequently and it is not possible for some children because of the cost. I was interested that the witnesses had singled out transition year.

We did single it out and for the purpose that is exactly what the Cathaoirleach pointed out. From the complaints we got, it seems all schools are just acting completely independently. There is no clear guidance about policies or transparency about decision-making. It is completely ad hoc and school dependent, which is completely unacceptable because transition year is such an important year for many students. Research shows that children who go through transition year do better in the leaving certificate and are more likely to go on to third level. We are really worried about it.

The cost shocked us. We had not realised there was such disparity in how much individual schools charge students to get into transition year, to enable them to go on a holiday abroad or to take part in all the different wonderful experiences. We gathered our case studies, therefore, given we were concerned there were some financial barriers and soft discrimination. It was so unclear that we wrote to the Department of Education and said it needed to develop a rights-based framework setting out to every school that whatever policy it devises must comply with the very basics of procedural fairness, transparency and appeals, because some children are just told there are only, say, 60 places, that interviews were done and there was a lottery, and then they do not get in. This is a really serious year that children are missing out on.

I could go on about this at length. We feel very passionate about it because we think it is hidden. It is not being talked about in public, but it is a very significant issue for children and there should be fairness in accessing transition year.

I know that some schools do the year very well. The school with which I have the most experience is that of my sons, in Kilkenny, and it is very good in that during the summer before transition year, meetings are held with parents to explain what the year is about and various aspects of work experience but also the cost. Assistance with that is available and the cost can be spread out. The school trip, for example, can be paid for in instalments. I do not see that in many secondary schools, however, so I always feel very lucky that my sons have that. I have a big issue with the education system in that it is so academic. It really pigeonholes people. They either get the points or do not, but there is so much else we could focus on such as life skills and other attributes people who are not necessarily academic might have.

I thank Dr. Muldoon and his staff for attending today and all the times they have been here. Some of us, probably including Deputy Sherlock, do share his frustration, but I am glad he raised it and called it out because that is important. As he will know, we invited in representatives of the youth advisory panel and we had a recent report on youth work, access to CAMHS and the Child Care (Amendment) Bill, which Deputy Sherlock raised. We have very similar recommendations to those of the ombudsman. We have published several reports and we would love the recommendations to be implemented. We will certainly keep pushing for that and for follow-up debates in the Dáil and the Seanad.

This is my last public meeting to chair in this role. It has genuinely been one of the best roles I have ever had and I feel honoured to have had the privilege over the past four and a bit years. I know that whoever takes over will continue in pushing the very important work. I thank everybody who has come before the committee during my time, particularly everyone who told their very personal stories at times. We have dealt with a great deal of legislation, including during Covid, when it was very difficult, but people persevered and were of great assistance to us as a committee in producing our reports and so on. I thank everybody, today's witnesses included, and Tusla, the Minister and all the various bodies with which we engage regularly, as well as our members. We hold a lot of meetings publicly but we have a lot of private meetings as well to discuss reports. Everybody rows in and there is a great sense of working together and towards solutions. Obviously, I am biased, but I do not think we get that in all committees, and that is down to the membership of the committee and their commitment to it.

Lastly, I thank the staff of the secretariat, who are the real heroes in all this and keep everything going. I must single out Anita because she goes above and beyond in all her work, and that is not to take away from the rest of the secretariat, who are all brilliant. Anyone who has engaged with the committee will acknowledge the work of Anita and how committed she is to it. I thought I should say that while I have the chance to do so publicly.

I propose we publish the opening statements to the Oireachtas website. Is that agreed? Agreed.