Question again proposed: "That the Bill be read a second time."

An Ceann Comhairle: Deputy O'Gorman has 20 minutes.

Deputy Roderic O'Gorman: I welcome this legislation and acknowledge the hard work of officials in the Department of Children, Disability and Equality. I know the Minister of State and the Minister, Deputy Foley, will recognise that work as well. Work on this Bill has been ongoing for some time. I was involved in some of the drafting work relating to the Bill when I was in the Department. I hope that it transits quickly through these Houses.

We have to consistently ask ourselves if our child protection laws and practices are effective. We must acknowledge that real progress has been made in this State on child protection since the referendum in 2012 and with the creation of the Department and of Tusla. Nevertheless, we are painfully aware that there are children who have been profoundly failed by those around them with a duty of care, including the State and its agencies.

This Bill will strengthen the child protection architecture and increase both responsiveness and accountability where necessary.

In terms of the Bill, a crucial element, and one I inserted, is section 10, which establishes the childcare implementation and inter-agency committee. This will put on a statutory basis, with very clear responsibilities, the committee I brought together on an administrative basis during my term as Minister. The committee involves Tusla, An Garda Síochána, the HSE, the Department of justice and others. Enhancing and strengthening inter-agency co-operation is probably the most crucial and the most consequential move we can make, especially as it had been clear to me that there is potential for lapses or failures in timely communication or timely engagement, particularly where it is essential that different parts of the State that deal directly with children should be talking to one another...

Deputy Peadar Tóibín: I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Bill. Vulnerable children have been treated terribly by the State and it is a dark mark against the Government and the previous Government. There are many good things in the Bill. There are bad things there also and I want to go into detail on them. When it comes to child protection and child welfare, there is no doubt we have to get better in terms of inter-agency communication and co-operation. There also needs to be transparency around data. We in Aontú have raised this issue in the Chamber over and over again. We have raised the individual reports produced by the national review panel on the deaths of children in State care. Some of the observations of the national review panel and Dr. Helen Buckley are harrowing.

There are serious gaps in the level of inter-agency communication and internally between different geographical Tusla units. Certain areas are not communicating with each other at all. These gaps are resulting in the deaths of children. I am thinking of instances where CAMHS has refused to accept children who are referred to it by Tusla simply because CAMHS does not have a policy on accepting children who use drugs or alcohol. Hugh was 16 when he died from a drug overdose after CAMHS told Tusla it would not take him. Niamh was another child under Tusla's care. She died at the age of 15 by suicide. She too was deemed ineligible by CAMHS. Another report about a girl called Ava under Tusla's care showed how she disclosed sexual abuse but nobody from Tusla spoke to her because in the Tusla area she was in, they assumed a social worker in the area where the alleged abuser lived was speaking to her. She was discharged from CAMHS after a mere two appointments and her body was found a few days later. She was 14 years old.

It is welcome that an inter-agency committee is to be set up under the legislation but it has an enormous amount to do. There is little joined-up work happening between various agencies and officials are passing children from Billy to Jack. These children are falling through the cracks and they are being left with no supports, abandoned to the point where I am reading the details of the findings of the inquests of their deaths. This has been the result of Government action....

Deputy Paula Butterly: In broad strokes, I welcome this Bill and the debate in the Chamber on it, be it on childcare places or the Bill itself. Today I want to focus on two points, namely, the duty to co-operate and the establishment of the committee. For the past couple of months, I have had my eyes opened in Drogheda. I normally visit schools on a weekly basis. Most recently, before Christmas, I visited three schools where it was highlighted to me that children of seven years of age were coming in high on drugs - not high on life; high on drugs. Principals pointed out to me the immense pressure they are under trying to keep the children safe and away from their peers - teenagers who are grooming them and turning them into drug mules. Schools are supposed to be areas of safety, which protect the children, lift them up and give them the start of a good life. They should not be facing these pressures.

In a lot of cases these children are coming from homes where there is addiction, where the mother or the grandmother or the absent father is not there to facilitate and help them, to protect them and to give them the guidance and care that they need. We need to step in where this is failing. In Drogheda we have The Red Door Project, which is an excellent service. It helps people with addictions yet it has not got the funding for outreach programmes. We have the wonderful Connect Family Resource Centre in Drogheda and the Redeemer Family Resource Centre in Dundalk, both of which go out into the communities. The communities themselves offer great assistance to many families but they cannot do it alone. I have always said that it needs to go from top to bottom and bottom to top. It has to be a unified approach.

We talk about Tusla and An Garda Síochána. I have to say the gardaí in County Louth have been exceptional. They have had to face criminal organisations over the past number of years, and they have been excellent at bringing these people to justice and achieving convictions. However, we always know that when we lob off the head of a snake another head grows in its place. The pressure is continuous. The pressure on resources is continuous. The gardaí are there to bring these people to justice but they cannot be there 24 hours a day. When I am out and about at events, the gardaí are always there, they are always helping, and they are always listening. However, the biggest complaint I hear is that one hand does not speak to the other hand. That is why in this Bill I am really heartened to see there is going to be a duty to co-operate. I regret that has to be put on a statutory footing and that all of these bodies need to be pressurised and legally put on a statutory footing in order to talk to each other because common sense would say that to combat a problem everybody should be brought to the table. We had that in Drogheda. We had the Drogheda implementation board from 2021 until December 2024 where we saw that first hand. We should see it as a test model for other places.

I am a big fan of the Greentown Project in Limerick. It is not about one Department. It is not about one body. It is about bringing all the Departments and bodies together, including the communities, and getting to the heart of these communities to show these young children who are being used as drug mules or drug dealers.

I said it this morning, I said it yesterday and I said it to the Minister, Deputy O'Callaghan, before Christmas that I was at a conference in Drogheda at which I told the average age of a drug mule is now between seven and ten years of age. The average age of a child to be used as a drug dealer is between ten and 12 years of age. I found that absolutely horrific. I was aware that teenagers were being groomed and used but the very idea that these teenagers are now so au fait with the procedures and processes of these criminal activities that they are in a position to get their claws into young children as young as seven years of age is absolutely unacceptable for a society. Like a lot of people, I did not expect to hear that information when I went into those schools. I believe a lot of people would find that difficult to accept, never mind digest, this sort of information. The duty to co-operate will be fundamental to ensure we can make some effective progress in protecting our children. It is absolutely essential.

I really welcome the establishment of a committee. However, a committee is only as good as the people on it and the resources and powers given to it. This committee is very welcome but it cannot be a talking shop. It cannot be a committee that meets a couple of times a year, which goes out and visits a few communities, comes back, puts a report together and puts it on a shelf. This cannot be a data collecting activity which gathers dust. It has to be effective. When we have put agencies like Cúan in place, we have seen how effective they can be and how they reach out to the different organisations. Indeed, Women's Aid Dundalk recently received €6.5 million for new beds. That is hugely welcome. It shows that when there is a committee or an agency with proper oversight, proper powers and proper funding, we can achieve something. In the times we are living in, we are facing so many threats left, right and centre. Today it is AI, tomorrow it is Grok and who know what it will be next week. We genuinely do not know but we have to prepare, and we have to be there for our children right from the beginning. As I said before, we cannot let these people get their claws into our children...

[Click here to read the full debate on the Oireachtas website]