SELECT COMMITTEE ON HEALTH AND CHILDREN díospóireacht -
Thursday, 29 May 2008

Annual Output Statement 2008.

Acting Chairman (Deputy Margaret Conlon)

On behalf of the select committee, I welcome the Minister of State with responsibility for children, Deputy Barry Andrews. I congratulate him and wish him well in his new role.

This meeting is to consider the Revised Estimates and output statements for the Office of the Minister for Children, Vote 41. A proposed timetable has been circulated. It allows for an opening statement by the Minister of State and the Opposition spokespeople, followed by an open discussion on the Estimates and the output statement. Is that agreed? Agreed. I invite the Minister of State to make his opening statement.

Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children (Deputy Barry Andrews)

I thank the Acting Chairman for her kind welcome. It is great to be present today to address the select committee and present an outline of the financial allocations included in the 2008 Revised Estimates for public services: Vote 41 — Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, OMCYA. The total estimate of the funding required in the year ending 31 December 2008 for the provision of certain services, including miscellaneous grants, in respect of the OMCYA under Vote 41 is €675.394 million. This consists of €573.830 million in current funding and €101.564 million in capital funding. In the time available to present the Estimates to the committee, I propose to outline details of the 2008 resource allocations across the individual subheads in the Vote.

The committee might note that the early child care payment was introduced with effect from 1 April 2006. This payment is made quarterly in arrears to parents of eligible children under the age of six. Approximately 1.2 million payments were made in 2007, totalling almost €418 million. The early child care supplement was increased by 10% in budget 2008 and represents a payment of €1,100 in a calendar year to parents of eligible children. A sum of €506 million has been provided under subhead A to support the payments in 2008. Eligibility for payment is determined by the Department of Social and Family Affairs on the same basis as entitlement to child benefit and that Department also administers the payments on behalf of the OMCYA.

The national child care investment programme was announced in budget 2006 as a successor programme to the equal opportunities child care programme, EOCP. Up to the end of 2007, almost 40,000 new child care places were delivered under the EOCP and more than 26,500 existing child care places were supported. Over 3,000 child care staff were also supported under the programme. The national child care investment programme is intended to build on the success of the EOCP through a proactive approach to the development of quality child care, facilitated by the city and county child care committees and grounded in the identification of local needs. The main objective of the programme is the creation of an additional 50,000 new child care places, of which 20% will be for the three to four year age group and 10% for after-school care.

The national child care investment programme is wholly Exchequer funded. The total allocation to the programme is €575 million over five years, of which €358 million is in respect of capital expenditure and €217 million for current expenditure. Up to the end of December 2007, capital grants totalling €134 million have been approved to child care providers under the investment programme. Capital grants totalling a further €39 million were approved in January 2008. These approvals are expected to lead to the creation of more than 23,000 new child care places, as well as supporting more than 5,500 existing places to further develop quality child care provision. In addition, the programme continues to support the city and county child care committees and the national voluntary child care organisations as part of its broad approach to developing the infrastructure for child care.

Under the EOCP, a staffing grant was available to community organisations to allow them to operate reduced fees for disadvantaged parents. On the closure of this programme, the Government decided to continue to support community child care services to provide affordable child care to disadvantaged parents. Accordingly, the community child care subvention scheme was introduced with effect from January 2008 under the national child care investment programme. The subvention scheme has been allocated €154.2 million over the next three years. Under the new scheme it will be possible to ensure that the level of grant aid for which individual services qualify will reflect the actual level of services they provide, and the profile of the parents benefiting from the service. The subvention received by the service will, in turn, be reflected in the reduced fees for parents who qualify as disadvantaged under the scheme. Services which were in receipt of staffing grants under the EOCP and entered the new scheme will continue to be funded at their current levels until July 2008, as a transitional measure, and during the period 2008-10 they will also qualify for phased reduction of their previous level of support funding.

The community child care subvention scheme provides an effective framework for the continued targeting of additional resources towards disadvantaged parents and their children, as well as giving sufficient time and support to existing services to adapt to the new arrangements.

Subhead C of the Vote provides for the prevention and early intervention programme for children for which an allocation of €3 million has been made this year. This programme, which was initially announced in 2006, is primarily aimed at promoting better outcomes for children through innovation and improved planning, integration and delivery of services. The programme uses international evidence of what works to support the activities chosen. This requires a range of statutory and non-statutory agencies, working across sectors, to collaborate in both service design and inter-agency delivery.

The programme is being managed by my office and the administration of funds is overseen by it. It will run for a five-year period with a fund amounting to €36 million in total, of which €18 million is being provided by the Government and the balance by Atlantic Philanthropies. The Government agreed that the best use of this funding would be to focus initially on a small number of projects in severely disadvantaged areas and accordingly, the funds have been committed to projects in Ballymun, west Tallaght and Darndale-Belcamp, based on plans drawn up over a two-year period by local statutory and community bodies.

The development and commissioning of an appropriate evaluation framework is nearing completion with input from an international panel of experts, the Office of the Minister of State with responsibility for children and youth affairs, and Atlantic Philanthropies. All three projects have commenced work and the recruitment of core staff is complete. The priorities for 2008 include the finalisation of service design and evaluation frameworks, the commencement of a phased roll-out of interventions and the commencement of evaluation.

Subhead D provides for the costs associated with the national longitudinal study of children in Ireland and a range of other programmed activities by my office to support the implementation of the three goals of the national children's strategy, Our Children — Their Lives. The funding provision for 2008 amounts to €8.535 million and I propose to highlight for the committee the key areas for which the most significant amounts of funding are available in 2008.

My office is fully committed to implementing goal 1 of the strategy, which states that "children will have a voice in matters which affect them, and their views will be given due weight in accordance with their age and maturity". This is being done through a strategy to develop participation structures and promote the voice of children and young people by supporting their participation in Dáil na nÓg, Comhairle na nÓg, the Children and Young People's Forum, and other consultative and participative initiatives. A sum of €1.165 million is being made available for these purposes in 2008 from subhead D.

The second goal of the national children's strategy provides that "children's lives will be better understood; their lives will benefit from evaluation, research and information on their needs, rights and the effectiveness of services". The aim of this goal is to achieve a better understanding of how children grow up in Ireland, including both their individual and shared needs. To advance this goal, my office has set up a children's research programme which encompasses a number of different actions including a commissioned research programme, incorporating Growing up in Ireland: the National Longitudinal Study of Children and other commissioned research studies; a capacity-building research programme based on the award of Masters, PhD and research placement scholarships within my office; and a dissemination of research and information programme, most notably through the State of the Nation's Children report and the development of the national children's data strategy. A sum of €5.904 million is being made available in 2008 to support these activities.

The report Growing up in Ireland: the National Longitudinal Study of Children in Ireland is one of the most important pieces of research ever undertaken regarding children's lives. The aim of the National Longitudinal Study of Children in Ireland is "to study the factors which contribute to or undermine the well-being of children in contemporary Irish families and, through this, contribute to the setting of effective and responsive policies relating to children and to the design of services for children and their families". This study will monitor the development of 18,000 children — an infant cohort of 10,000 and a nine-year-old cohort of 8,000 children — yielding important information about each significant transition throughout their young lives.

The contract to undertake the first phase of this study, which covers the period 2006 to 2012, was awarded in April 2006 to a research consortium led by the Economic and Social Research Institute and Trinity College, Dublin. Preparatory work required to conduct the various elements of the study has been ongoing since 2006. The first phase of fieldwork for the nine-year cohort is expected to be completed by the end of May 2008 and it is envisaged that subject to the necessary ethics approval, fieldwork for the infant cohort will commence in September 2008. Once fieldwork is completed a number of research reports on the findings will be developed and published.

The third goal three of the national children's strategy provides that "children will receive quality supports and services to promote all aspects of their development". My office supports this goal through a range of actions, including the development of evidence-based outcomes, focused planning capacity, the implementation of the national play and recreation policies, supporting the work of the National Children's Advisory Council and the National Children's Strategy Implementation Group and the development of children's services committees.

A sum of €250,000 is being made available to support the implementation of the national play and recreation policies. In building on the success of the national play policy, which was instrumental in improving the national play infrastructure for children in Ireland, Teenspace — a National Recreation Policy for Young People was launched by my predecessor last September. The policy provides a strategic framework for the promotion of positive recreational opportunities aimed principally at young people aged 12 to 18 years.

The launch of the policy highlighted the Government's commitment to the development of youth cafés. There are already a number of youth cafés in operation around the country. Funding for these existing initiatives is provided through a number of bodies including local city and county councils and the HSE. The Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs also operates a number of relevant funding programmes aimed at supporting community development, locally-based community and voluntary groups, as well as programmes aimed specifically at supporting projects for disadvantaged youth.

At this stage, the focus is to bring better coherence to the approach taken to date, retaining the strong inter-agency element and identifying an appropriate model for youth cafés for future development. Since September, my office has undertaken a small survey of some of the existing cafés looking at mission objectives, management and organisation, service levels and the role of young people.

The National Children's Advisory Council is also preparing advice on the development of a youth café model and research work has been commissioned by the council in this regard. It is anticipated that the council will be in a position to report on this matter shortly. This work will guide the Government in ensuring that funding is targeted and co-ordinated most effectively on a model or models of youth cafés which meet the needs identified by young people themselves.

Discussions are underway with relevant Departments regarding a youth café programme and appropriate funding mechanisms. Consideration is being given to which agency could best lead the programme and how to ensure any funding which might be made available augments, without displacing, the existing inter-agency resources.

The National Children's Strategy Implementation Group was established in late 2006 with representatives drawn from relevant Departments, the HSE, local authorities, the education sector and other key relevant agencies. The group agreed that four children service's committees, CSCs, should be established in the county development board areas of Dublin city, south Dublin, Limerick and Donegal, with the objective of developing county level action plans for children's services. These four will lead on the development of a prototype structure and methodology for collaboration of service delivery, which could be used across all county development boards.

Support needs for the CSCs were identified and appropriate expertise commissioned. This assistance is ongoing at individual CSC level. A sum of €550,000 is being made available to support the development of the children's services committees in 2008. Their objective is to develop strong cross-agency working relationships, secure support for the joint implementation of policies and initiatives requiring inter-agency action, and maximise integration of service delivery at local level.

The National Children's Advisory Council has a specific role in monitoring the implementation of the national children's strategy. A new approach to monitoring the implementation of the strategy was agreed by the National Children's Advisory Council in late 2007 to support a greater focus on on-the-ground implementation and, in particular, the integration of services. Significant issues for key Departments were identified and bilateral meetings of the council, with representatives from the appropriate Department in attendance, to discuss progress and challenges have commenced.

By the end of the lifetime of the council in May 2008, the Departments of Education and Science, Social and Family Affairs, and Justice, Equality and Law Reform will have had bilateral sessions with the council. A sum of €100,000 is being made available to support the work of the council in 2008.

A sum of €3 million has been allocated under subhead E to support costs in connection with the holding of a constitutional referendum on children's rights in 2008. The Twenty-Eighth Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2007 was published in February 2007 and contained the Government's proposal to amend the Constitution in relation to children. The programme for Government of June 2007 committed to deepening consensus on the issue. To this end, the Joint Committee on the Constitutional Amendment on Children was established, in November 2007, to report back within four months on the proposals set out in the Bill. However, the work of the committee progressed to include a legal audit and analysis of over 144 submissions. Given the complexity and sensitivity of the issues raised by the Twenty-Eighth Amendment to the Constitution Bill 2007, the committee received Dáil and Seanad approval for an extension of its timeframe to 30 November 2008. The committee is now progressing its work and the Government awaits the outcome of its deliberations before proceeding further with this issue.

Subhead F includes the sum of €20.283 million in appropriations-in-aid for the Vote in 2008. This is made up of €17.283 million in EU receipts, which stem from the operation of the Equal Opportunities Childcare Programme 2000-2006 that was part funded by the EU. The programme ended in December 2007 and the EU contribution is repaid in arrears by the EU.

It also includes an additional €3 million that has been provided under subhead C from the Dormant Accounts Fund to support the early intervention programme for children and a corresponding appropriation-in-aid is recorded in subhead E in accordance with the provisions of the Dormant Accounts Acts 2001 and 2005.

The establishment of the Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs clearly demonstrates the Government's commitment to improving outcomes for children and young people. In my capacity as Minister of State with responsibility for children and youth affairs, I am particularly pleased to represent the interests of children and young people at the Cabinet table and to be in a position to develop and deliver policies and programmes on their behalf through the substantial Exchequer resources being made available in the Vote for my office in 2008.

I welcome any questions members might wish to raise on the funding provisions in the Vote.

Acting Chairman

I call on Deputy Shatter to make an opening statement. He has 15 minutes.

Deputy Alan Shatter

I thank the Minister of State for his statement. I am conscious that it is his first Estimates session with the committee and that he has been in office only for a short time. I ask him not to take personally anything I am about to say. I do not mean it in a personal sense. What I will say is borne out of a sense of deep personal frustration and genuine concern as to the extent to which his office is truly meeting its purpose and the extent to which child protection measures are operating properly.

Before I go there, I want to briefly touch on one or two of the other issues the Minister of State raised. He referred to the child care subvention scheme. The committee will be aware that immediately after the last election a new scheme was announced, which created a great deal of worry and general chaos within the child care services. As a consequence of the controversy and difficulties created, the scheme was substantially revised towards the end of last year or early this year. We, in the Fine Gael Party, are holding a watching brief. There were substantial changes from the original announcement which greatly improved the scheme. I suspect there may be some teething problems which may not emerge until 2009. It is important that this scheme continues to ensure that the current level of child care services is maintained, that they remain affordable for parents and that the affordable services are extended where required.

Cost is one of the great difficulties for parents right across the country where both mother and father wish to work and are required to use child care services. There are far too many families where approximately 70% to 80% of the net income of one parent goes on child care costs, making it almost not worthwhile for that parent to work other than in the hope of some future career when the children get older.

We do not have an adequate child care system. The system needs to be radically revised. It is my personal view — it was a view expressed by both Fine Gael and the Labour Party in the lead in to the last election — that, at the very least, one year of free preschool for all children in the country should be provided by a proper, adequately funded and expert service. The service varies from one crèche to another and the facilities available vary despite the regulations that have been put in place. Nevertheless, I suspect this is an issue to which we will return later this year or early next year and I want to concentrate on one particular area.

Having been a Member of the House for many years, with an involuntary interruption between 2002 and 2007, I am not convinced that anything I say today will remotely matter to the Minister of State or result in any reaction from his Department. Nor will it get any public notice of any description whatsoever because it seems the only time the media take notice of children's issues is when there is a tragedy. When one tries to prevent tragedies occurring, the media regard it as rather boring and uninteresting. I am afraid all too frequently concerns I voiced in the House over many years about children at risk that have not been properly followed up have resulted in tragedies and inevitable inquiries and reports producing rafts of recommendations as to what we should do when it is too late for the child who has been the victim of the tragedy. Very few of the recommendations are implemented.

I wish to make a particular point regarding this area and to put the Minister of State very specifically on notice. I am conscious that he is a new Minister of State, but his office has been there for some years. A Department specifically concerned with children's issues was something for which I personally campaigned for many years at a time when the political establishment was opposed to it. The manner in which the Department operates in the child care area is a cause of considerable disappointment and grave concern to me. This relates to the transfer of functions to the HSE, the incapacity of the HSE to maintain up-to-date information on what is happening on the ground, the Department's consequent incapacity to be kept informed as to what is occurring and what appears to be an abysmal lack of communication with the HSE and major deficits in the managerial areas.

Specifically, I refer to child care services. The Minister of State should be aware — I am sure he has been briefed on this — that under the Child Care Act 1991 an obligation is imposed on the HSE to produce an annual report setting out the manner in which it is fulfilling its duties in child protection functions and the manner in which it is applying the provisions of that Act and the amendments to that Act subsequently enacted.

We are in the extraordinary position where the Minister of State and his Department have no up-to-date information on which he can rely on what is happening in the child care services. It would be better if the Minister of State frankly admitted that rather than pretend he knows what is happening. For the sake of his own political salvation in the future, I suggest it would be much better if he did that and stated specifically what the problems are with the HSE and what he will do about it.

On 28 February last, the HSE finally got around to publishing quietly on its website, without announcing it to anyone, its report on the child protection services for 2005. There has been no report of any description yet published for 2006. There is no report published for 2007. When, in January, I tabled parliamentary questions to the then Minister of State, Deputy Brendan Smith, asking did he know how many children had been reported as being at risk to the HSE whose cases were awaiting detailed assessment and intervention, he did not have that information and the HSE apparently did not have that information either to furnish to the Minister. It took a series of further parliamentary questions to get a response of any description from the HSE and the response I got was disingenuous. The HSE has not provided me with those up-to-date figures at all. What they have told me is they are putting systems in place so that they might at some stage in the future be able to evaluate that information and have it available to them.

It is quite extraordinary in this day and age, with the level of technology available, that a statutory body conferred with the obligation to carry out child care functions is not in a position to monitor what is happening within the different regions and within community care teams and know the number of children who have been reported to them as being at serious risk and have adjudged the number of children who require intervention in the sense of family assessment or child assessment, and the number in respect of whom they have not yet had the capacity to undertake such assessment.

The Minister of State does not know that information. The HSE apparently does not know that information. The HSE finally managed to produce alarming figures for 2006.

Acting Chairman

If I could interrupt Deputy Shatter, we are supposed to be considering the Estimates today.

Deputy Alan Shatter

I am considering the Estimates under a specific heading, namely, the national children's strategy, and I would appreciate if the Acting Chairman did not interrupt me in doing so. Under goal 3 of the national children's strategy, as the Minister of State mentioned, children are supposed to receive "quality supports and services to promote all aspects of their development". Goal 2 is also of relevance here. There is also the provision ensuring all children are provided with the protection to which they are entitled. Various other councils are supposed to be overseeing what is happening. The Minister of State made it seem that we have structures which are functioning. However, all of the bodies to which I refer are operating within an environment where there is a scandalous information deficit.

The Minister of State does not know how many children are at risk. However, feedback I have received from social workers indicates that there are hundreds of cases — each relating to individual children — where there have been reports of children at risk, where such reports have been taken sufficiently seriously to generate concern but where the files relating to the children involved are sitting in cabinets and have not been allocated to social workers for investigation. I warn the Minister of State that unless there is a radical change of approach on the part of the HSE and unless his Department — in order to enable it to exercise its laudable objectives — insists that he is kept up to date by the executive regarding where matters stand in that regard, children who are known to be at risk and in respect of whom intervention should have taken place are going to die.

I wish to be absolutely clear about this matter. Other children will suffer ongoing and serious physical or sexual abuse. It will eventually emerge into the public domain that the name of some child who suffered serious personal injury or who lost his or her life was on a list for intervention by a social worker but that such intervention did not occur. There will then be another inquiry and everyone will throw their hands in the air and state that it is terrible.

The Department of Health and Children should have ready access to the type of information to which I refer. It should also be overseeing the operations of the HSE. It should not be the case that the Department states that a matter is the responsibility of the HSE and washes its hands of it. The HSE's systems are so dysfunctional, they render it incapable of fulfilling its statutory functions.

In the context of the national children's strategy, the Minister of State referred to research that is being undertaken and spoke about the objective to ensure that all children receive such social work supports or intervention as are required. The Children First guidelines were put in place in 1999 in order to ensure that the statutory agencies responsible for child care would apply a uniform approach across the country of a professional nature to provide children with the protection to which they are entitled. The latter is categorically not happening.

The McElwee report, which shows the extent to which the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, the HSE, the former Midland Health Board and the Garda Síochána failed utterly to comply with the Children First guidelines, was published some weeks ago. It is extremely critical of what occurred in the case to which it refers and recommended that the Children First guidelines should be given statutory force. The Minister of State should implement that recommendation.

How do I know that the guidelines are not being applied in a uniform manner? First, I know it because of the feedback I received from social workers. However, it is also patently obvious from the information we received from the HSE. I finally obtained information from the executive for the year 2006 with regard to reports of child abuse. It took four months to procure information that is two and a half years old. That is extraordinary. The information to which I refer shows that if one is a child abuser, one should move to the HSE south region — which comprises Kerry, Cork and other parts of the south — because it is unlikely that one's activities will be detected. The children living in this area are most at risk at present. However, children throughout the entire country are at risk.

The statistics relating to 2006 are extraordinary and inexplicable. If the Children First guidelines were being uniformly applied, information of this nature would not exist. The statistics indicate that in the Dublin-mid-Leinster region in 2006 there were 2,203 reports of child abuse. In HSE jargon, these reports generate child protection concerns after initial assessment. The word "assessment" is misleading because it does not mean that anyone has seen a child. The manner in which the HSE provides information is appalling. The fact that an assessment has been made does not mean that a family has been visited; it means that someone may have assessed a telephone call or a letter following a conversation with someone else. Of the 2,203 reports to which I refer, genuine concern arose in respect of 1,546, or 70%. At some stage, assessments or interventions had to be made. Ultimately, some 27% of the total number of 2,203 cases were confirmed to have involved child abuse.

Let us contrast the figures I have outlined with those relating to HSE south region. There were 2,556 reports of abuse in this region, some 353 more than in Dublin-mid-Leinster. However, only 728 cases — 27% — in the HSE south region gave rise to genuine concerns. Therefore, real concern arose in 70% of cases in one area while only 27% gave rise to such concern in the other. Is anyone suggesting that more people in the south were guilty of falsely reporting than were their counterparts in Dublin-mid-Leinster? Does that make sense?

Acting Chairman

Will the Deputy bring his opening statement to a conclusion?

Deputy Alan Shatter

I will. Of the 2,556 cases in the HSE south region, 7% were confirmed to have involved child abuse. This compares to 27% of cases in the Dublin-mid-Leinster which were confirmed to have involved such abuse.

Similar discrepancies arise in respect of the Dublin north-west area and the HSE west region. There were 2,385 reports of abuse in Dublin north west, of which only 713 — 30% — generated concern. Some 16% of the total number of cases in this area were confirmed to have involved child abuse. In the HSE west region, there were 1,828 reported cases and some 580 — 32% — of these generated concern. Abuse was confirmed in 19% of the total number of cases.

What those simple statistics clearly prove is that the Children First guidelines are not being uniformly applied throughout the country. There are other aspects of the information to which I refer that I will have an opportunity to raise at a later date. What action does the Minister of State intend to take in order to ensure that there will be compliance with the Children First guidelines? What does he propose to do to force the HSE to comply with its statutory obligations? The HSE published a report for 2006 but the 2007 report should have emerged by now.

What does the Minister of State propose to do to ensure that the hundreds of children who are known to be at risk will receive the social work interventions to which they are entitled? What action does he intend to take to have those cases in the HSE south region that have been assessed as being of no concern during the past three years revisited? It cannot be the case that only 7% of reported cases in the HSE south region involved abuse, while almost 30% in the Dublin-mid-Leinster region were confirmed to have involved abuse. There are children who have been adjudged as not being at risk but who are clearly at risk. The files relating to these children are not even included in those awaiting allocation to social workers for assessment. This is a major scandal.

Deputy Rory O’Hanlon

I congratulate the Minister of State on his appointment. I wish him a successful and pleasant term of office. I have no doubt that he will do a good job. I pay tribute to my constituency colleague, the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Deputy Smith, who spent a short period as Minister of State with responsibility for children. However, I was very impressed with the way he went about his job as he was a good listener. He had a difficult time with the community child care subvention programme but, having listened to what people had to say, he found a solution to the problem. I appreciate very much the work he did in this regard.

The Minister of State referred to early intervention under subhead C. How does he intend to approach this in the three target areas in Dublin because it is the solution to the many difficulties faced by parents and children, especially in regard to education? Is it intended to target the parents to ensure they are aware of the value of education and they receive assistance in ensuring their children have the best start in life?

A multiplicity of agencies are involved in the youth café proposal. Very often using multiple agencies makes it difficult for people to establish a facility. The Minister of State referred to co-ordination. Are there plans to streamline the application process for the establishment of such cafés?

Funding under the peace programme is due to cease at the end of the June and this is an issue in the Border region. This will create a problem in making ends meet from 1 July for a number of facilities along the Border. I spoke to the Minister of State's predecessor about this and the youth affairs section in the Department of Education and Science has been transferred to the Minister of State's Department since. I do not know how it is intended to address this issue.

I refer to the issue of child psychiatry and the cohort of people who are no longer considered to be children but who are still not considered to be adults. There was a difficulty assessing and attending to them. This creates a difficulty for a good, viable facility in Castleblayney in my constituency which provides specialist child care. Will that be addressed by the Minister of State's office or by another discipline within the health service?

In the context of health promotion, good voluntary activity is ongoing in trying to combat the abuse of alcohol, particularly among young teenagers. The issue is having a point of contact in place through the HSE or the Department to provide them with the support to which they are entitled because it can be difficult for them to find out which State agency they should approach. Sometimes, when they do so, they find their problem is not always dealt with as appropriately as it might be.

Deputy Paul Connaughton

Like previous speakers, I wish the Minister of State well. He was one of the people I had marked out for greater things and if given half a chance, he will do a good job in the Department.

I would like to raise a few issues and it would be no harm to flag them. The early child care supplement scheme is good in that it is targeted at a particular group. The problem, however, is the same assessment criteria are used for this scheme as for the child benefit scheme. Naturally, for many years eligibility for the latter scheme has been good and I have always found it intelligent to make the payment primarily to the mother. I am in the House for a long time and I have come across many mean husbands and partners who do not treat their wives or partners or children well. Whatever changes are made to these schemes, the funding should always go directly to the mother. Other issues arise relating to taxation and income but, irrespective of household income, I have been told by social workers that on occasion if the payment does not go directly to the mother, she will not see it. One would always want to take great note of that but I am sure the Minister of State is aware of that.

I refer to the national child care investment programme and the number of places. Significant work has been done around the country and a significant sum of taxpayer's money has gone into the system, which is very important. Child care costs have levelled out, having been more expensive in urban areas in the past, with such costs being very expensive throughout the State. It was always intended that State-supported crèches would be provided for disadvantaged families. I would like the Minister of State to ensure over the next few years that the word "disadvantaged" is used to the benefit not alone of people in receipt of social welfare payments but also the new poor, comprising low income families with only one earner who are just above the social welfare threshold. If places in such crèches are not made available to these families, they will not work because in many parts of rural Ireland the numbers of social welfare recipients and people just above the social welfare threshold are high.

If for any reason their children are debarred from such child care facilities, two problems will emerge. First, the families will be unable to pay for private child care but the places in the State facility will not be filled because the local population is usually small. That will be a major issue and I am marking the Minister of State's card regarding this category of people. The assessment should be made to include that category of people. I am not making a case that child care places should be subsidised for those with large incomes. However, I wish to ensure that for the majority of people who are now termed the "new poor", their children will be eligible for such a facility.

I refer to youth cafés and other related youth work. Last week the Minister of State, Deputy Michael Kitt, and I were at a community college in Dunmore, County Galway, where we spoke to many of the students and this was one of the matters raised by a number of them and to which Deputy O'Hanlon made a passing reference. While they knew there would be some form of financial and other assistance available, they could not access the information about this. There seems to be a plethora of places with their hand in the pie but there does not appear to be anybody directly responsible for the delivery of the service. I expect the Minister of State's office would be the centre for co-ordination. Some single agency should be the co-ordinator.

Allied to this matter, much work is being carried out by other agencies, many of which are voluntary. This touches on what Deputy Shatter said about disadvantaged areas or, perhaps more importantly, disadvantaged households where families are under pressure for a variety of reasons.

I started my working life a good while ago as a youth officer but young people are the same all the time. I find that national organisations such as Foróige and the No Name clubs do significant and important work. Their work is based on the principle of creating an atmosphere in which young people in the age group from 12 to 17 or 18 will prosper and grow and amuse themselves, which is very important.

The Minister of State is directly in the eye of the storm on this one and I wish to put down a marker to him. We have been warned by economists that there will be a dip in the economy. There is always a danger that the first thing to be hit will be the grant aid to organisations such as these. This has been the pattern over the years as they are regarded as a soft target. When money gets scarce, the first place to be hit is the area of youth organisations. It would be a cardinal sin if it were to happen because every single euro spent in that area repays itself a thousand times in years to come.

It would be outside the scope of this committee to go into the reasons. Whatever else the Government does in the next budget, it should ensure the funding for this type of development, targeted as it is at disadvantaged areas and to youth in general throughout the country, is not withdrawn or reduced. The Government should ensure that whatever programmes are in place will be financed in the future because otherwise we will reap a bad whirlwind if we let that funding drop. I acknowledge this is not the sexiest subject in the world and not too many people are writing about it but it is very important. I would like to think the Minister of State would take a personal interest to ensure this does not happen.

Deputy Barry Andrews

I thank the members for their contributions. In response to the issues raised by Deputy Shatter, I know he will say that no personal insult is intended and none has been taken. I know he has a lot of experience and knowledge of this area and his motives are of the highest order. I do not agree that the child care subvention area is in chaos as Deputy Shatter describes it and I reject that view.

Deputy Alan Shatter

I said it was, not that it is now.

Deputy Barry Andrews

I should have understood the distinction. Deputy O'Hanlon is quite correct to say that Deputy Brendan Smith, the former Minister of State with responsibility for children, handled the issue very well. The process of information dissemination continues and, by and large, people are quite happy when the system is explained to them. It is equitable throughout in its operation.

However, the more substantial issue raised by Deputy Shatter is child protection. Looking at what has happened in the past three or four weeks, one would think that child protection was invented as an issue three weeks ago. Not only Deputy Shatter but also other politicians and the Health Service Executive, to its credit, have acknowledged a shortfall in information and the HSE is addressing this by various means. While the "Prime Time Investigates" programme gave the impetus for further attention to the issue, I do not think we should be too precious about that fact as it is part and parcel of public affairs that the media would sometimes set the agenda while at other times it would be politicians.

I agree with Deputy Shatter that the media life cycle for these issues can be all too short. We do not want a system that is crisis-led. We want to include the other side of the issue which is child welfare, early intervention and prevention, and to try to get people to concentrate on that other side of the equation rather than simply waiting for the issues to come to the attention of the HSE and the Garda Síochána and for the issues to drive the agenda. We want to be at the earlier stage. It does not require any great insight to know that early intervention is the best way to ensure better outcomes for children.

To return to the issue of numbers, the Deputy is asking me to take steps with the HSE. I have taken some of those steps and I also take on board the points made by him. I met the HSE in my first week in office and I explained my concerns which are broadly similar to Deputy Shatter's, namely, that we do not have a complete picture of the figures in terms of the numbers of children on waiting lists and the time they are spending on waiting lists. We do not have a full picture of the regional differences. There are a couple of reasons for this deficit and a couple of solutions. The reasons go back to the legacy of the health boards. Everybody operated under a different system so what was assessment in one area was not assessment in another area. The Deputy is correct to ask the reason for the disparity between south and mid-Leinster. I cannot say for certain but it may well be part of the legacy issue. It may have any other number of causes but we will examine this.

My office is planning to go out to the local health offices to find out how they assess risk and what they regard as a waiting list. We will be looking for information as simple as that. We will ask how long people are on waiting lists and the number of people who have not been allocated a social worker. There are even situations where a family would be regarded as a single case in one area while in other areas all the children in the family are counted as separate cases, for instance, three or four cases. This kind of disparity does not allow us to assemble accurate information and clearly does not allow us to properly prepare strategy and solutions.

This is our first task. The information in the 32 local health offices will feed into the existing national child care information project which, as the Deputy says, will take advantage of existing technology and allow us that over-arching information structure to allow us to develop policy properly. Under the current HSE service plan, the executive is required to have these figures by 1 July 2008. In terms of trying to manage what the HSE is doing, my office has asked the executive's child services management to meet my Department once a month, initially, with a view to getting to grips with these problems as outlined. We do not resile from the problems that exist. We must acknowledge that the number of referrals has increased substantially recently. That was clear from the child care programme. There were approximately 20,000 referrals per year, a great increase over what had been very insubstantial figures. That programme described it as a tidal wave. Let us give some credit where it is due. Considerably more referrals are coming into the system, which will naturally create pinch points and blockages.

Deputy Shatter referred to the McElwee report regarding the Children First guidelines. The current review of the Children First guidelines arises from the findings of the Ferns inquiry. The McElwee report is slightly different from other Children First reporting scenarios in that there was no single identifiable child at risk, as the Deputy will probably know from his reading of that report. This will inform the Children First review. Hence we will try to incorporate the findings of that report into the updated Children First guidelines. Naturally we are also trying to ensure that the information we get from other information gathering will feed into the more uniform implementation of Children First guidelines throughout the country to ensure better outcomes for children.

Deputy O'Hanlon referred to youth cafés and the streamlining of applications, and I agree with him. As he knows, youth affairs now form part of my remit. At the moment that transition is in hand. My initial impression is that it requires the overarching responsibility of one particular Department. It remains to be seen whether my Department is able to take advantage of this now. It certainly would point to that and it would be a sensible way to consider it.

Deputy Connaughton also referred to the vulnerability in funding. It is a soft touch when we are doing a bit of cheese paring. If we can bring it into an identifiable Department with one authority it may become more protected from such reductions. As I said in my speech, we hope to receive the results of research by NUI Galway into the best methods and standardisation. However, given that fashions, trends and what is cool are so relevant to young people, there is a danger in imposing one standard type of youth café which could appear tired within three or four years. We need to allow a certain organic development and create a model of management, at the very least, that allows some coherence in strategy. We have put considerable lottery funding into sports for young people. However, for those children not interested in sports the State needs to provide and encourage some form of recreation. That is the thinking behind that.

The area of health promotion comes under the remit of the Minister of State, Deputy Wallace. Child psychiatry comes under the remit of the Minister of State with responsibility for disability, Deputy Moloney. I will pass on the issues raised to the responsible Ministers of State. We do not ignore the fact that these are cross-cutting and the thinking is to try to ensure that they are addressed. The different Ministers and Ministers of State within the Department of Health and Children have a meeting every week to discuss issues that cross the different areas of responsibility.

Deputy Connaughton asked about the child care supplement. He said that in his experience mothers need to be safeguarded against difficulties that arise. The child care supplement goes to the same payee as the child benefit, which will continue to be the case and it works quite well. The Deputy suggested that disadvantage should include the new poor, as he calls them. The assessment for subvention includes those people on payments such as farm assist in rural areas, who are on band A of the subvention scheme. It also includes those in receipt of family income supplement and even those in receipt of a GP-only medical card. Working people on low incomes are coming in within the subvention anyway.

In addition, even if they do not benefit from the subvention, they benefit as a result of the State having invested considerable amounts into crèches through its capital programme. Therefore, they are not really paying the market price. Anybody who establishes a private crèche needs to pay for the mortgage insurance etc. whereas on the community side they tend to be based in community facilities without those overheads and hence the costs are reduced. While people whose income falls just above the threshold might not benefit from the subvention, they still benefit from the below-cost service.

I believe that most of the questions have been addressed.

Acting Chairman

I thank the Minister of State. Deputy O'Connor had indicated that he wishes to speak and then must leave. I will allow him to make a brief contribution now.

Deputy Charlie O’Connor

I apologise for leaving as I have other Dáil business. I want to be associated with the congratulations extended to the Minister of State. I have known him throughout the time since we were both first elected to the House and I have seen his caring side. I am confident that he will be very successful in the Department. I am delighted that he has a seat at the Cabinet table, allowing him to bring children's issues to Cabinet.

The Taoiseach's decision to allocate youth affairs to the Minister of State with responsibility for children was a very progressive step. My last real job was in the youth service and I feel very strongly about the need to develop that area. I am not saying anything about the former Minister of State and his remit. Linking youth affairs with children is very important. I know the Minister of State will take great interest in that issue. He should consider doing something to address the gap in volunteerism. When I was involved in the youth service the then Minister of State with responsibility for children, Deputy Fahey, had a very successful recruitment campaign for volunteers. There is now even less interest in volunteerism than used to be the case. I know former Deputy Chris Flood carried out a special report for the Department in that regard. Perhaps the Minister of State will revisit the issue.

I normally would not mention Tallaght, but the Minister of State did so in page 8 of his statement. I was delighted to welcome him to An Cosán on Tuesday night to give his support to that fledgling project. The Minister of State referred to the moneys made available to projects in Ballymun, Darndale, Belcamp and west Tallaght. That money is being well used. That model could be rolled out in other communities not only in the Dublin region but also around the country. I hope the Department will consider doing that.

I heard the Minister of State refer to the remits of his colleagues. Bearing in mind that this committee has received correspondence from the Ombudsman for Children, Ms Emily Logan, will the Office of the Minister for Children take an interest in the issue of the future delivery of children's hospital services in the Dublin region? While he may maintain it is the remit of other Ministers, as the Ombudsman for Children said, it falls very much within the remit of concern for children. I ask the Minister of State to take an interest in the matter.

Page 13 of the Minister of State's statement refers to the work of the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs. There is some confusion that needs to be resolved regarding the various grant schemes that have been administered by that Department, particularly the so-called "drugs money". Has the Minister of State made an agreement with the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs to take over responsibility for those, as was indicated in the Taoiseach's statement at the time of his appointment? The groups not only in Tallaght but also throughout the country need to know the position. Many of them are asking us because they are not very clear as to whether it falls within the scope of the Office of the Minister for Children or whether the Minister of State with responsibility for the drugs strategy, Deputy Curran, will continue to do that. I wish the Minister of State well. I have every confidence that he will do a great job for us. He will certainly have my support.

Deputy Alan Shatter

As this is supposed to be a question and answer session, I would like to ask the Minister of State some questions. It might facilitate us in wrapping up this meeting. The Minister spoke earlier about goal No. 2 of the national children's strategy, which is the goal to which I was referring when I was speaking. It states: "children's lives will be better understood; their lives will benefit from evaluation, research and information on their needs, rights and the effectiveness of services". I presume that the reference to this element of the strategy in the Minister of State's presentation means that it is an objective of the Office of the Minister for Children.

I welcome the Minister of State's decision to meet the HSE and to put in place a structure whereby a monthly report can be received from that body. It is an important initiative. It is regrettable that we are where we are in the context of the HSE. I think I am right in saying that the executive is in its fourth year of existence. If I remember correctly, 2005, 2006 and 2007 were the first three years of the HSE. I do not accept that the HSE's difficulties in compiling figures derive from the former health boards. When Deputy Woods was Minister for Health many years ago, I raised child protection issues relating to children who were at risk. I assure the Minister of State that I gave the then Minister a difficult time in the House on certain occasions. I tabled parliamentary questions on these matters until a structure was put in place which required the health boards to produce detailed figures. It seems that in the 1980s, the health boards produced more detailed figures about what was happening in the child protection area than the HSE has proved capable of publishing, or even making available to the Minister of State with responsibility for children in the past three years. It is regrettable that the Minister of State's predecessors were not more proactive in ensuring not only that information was available but also that the Office of the Minister for Children was capable of undertaking its statutory function of evaluating the level of service and providing proper and adequate child protection. HSE officials should have been called in a long time ago to explain their actions in this regard.

The HSE has a statutory obligation to produce an annual report on our child care services. I understand that the 2005 report, which was published on the HSE's website on 28 February 2008, was furnished to the Minister of State's predecessor. It was submitted to the Office of the Minister for Children in late June or early July 2007. I do not understand why it was allowed to languish there without being acted on. The report should have been made public. If it was not the Minister of State's job to make it public, as soon as he received it he should have asked the HSE when it intended to publish it. It should not have been surreptitiously posted on a website without any announcement or without anyone knowing it was there. People do not look at the HSE website every day to check what is happening. When the 2005 report was received in the Office of the Minister for Children by the Minister of State's predecessor in June or July of 2007, why was it not published? If it was not the job of the Minister of State's predecessor to publish it, why did he not order the HSE to do so? When does the Minister of State expect that the 2006 report will be published? Has he discussed the matter with the HSE? Has he pointed out to the HSE that it is in breach of its statutory obligations? When will we get the 2007 report?

The child care reports are of huge importance if the Minister of State is to be facilitated in undertaking his political task, which is to co-ordinate children's policies and child care services. It is important for the Minister of State to know whether the financial allocations to the HSE for the child protection services are adequate. He needs to know where difficulties exist. If he does not have the annual report, he cannot do his job. If Members of the Oireachtas cannot access the report, they will not be in a position to assess the extent to which the HSE, the Minister of State and the Minister of State's predecessor have been and are being enabled to undertake their political responsibilities and functions. Given that it is now May 2008, it is not acceptable that the report for the year ending 31 December 2006 has not been published to date. I ask the Minister of State specifically to ensure that the HSE puts in place a system whereby the child care report for the preceding year is published no later than 31 March each year. I do not think that is unreasonable. If the HSE's information systems allow it to undertake its statutory obligations, the information we seek should be readily publishable within three months of the end of the relevant year. If the HSE has not reformed itself sufficiently to ensure that such systems are in place, children will continue to be at risk and the HSE will continue to operate on the basis of guesswork as it applies its resources in this area.

I am anxious to emphasise that nothing I have said today should be regarded as a criticism of this country's social workers, who are under huge pressure as they work at the coalface of our children's services. I understand that more than 150 social workers who are employed in the child care area within the community care teams are on maternity leave or leave for other reasons and their work has to be done by their colleagues. What is being done to ensure that substitutes are put in place when coalface workers in the child care and prevention services are on leave? We need to ensure that if someone is on six months' maternity leave, the files of the 30, 40, 50 or 60 at-risk children with whom they work are not simply left in a cabinet to gather dust until they return to work.

Deputy Barry Andrews

I thank Deputy O'Connor for his kind remarks. The Office of the Minister for Children promotes volunteerism among young people. It tries to create a sense of civic responsibility through the various activities in which it is involved. One of the first functions I attended when I was appointed as Minister of State was the young social innovators conference, which was attended by between 2,000 and 3,000 children from all parts of the country. There was a great spirit of innovation and civic responsibility and participation at the conference. The Office of the Minister for Children is conscious of its responsibilities under that heading.

I do not have a specific function in respect of children's hospital services. It is obvious that we are trying to facilitate as much cross-agency co-operation as possible. With officials from my office, I meet the Minister for Health and Children every week to make my observations known. However, my office does not have any particular input in that regard.

Regardless of the Department that ends up with responsibility for the young persons, facilities and services fund, which was mentioned by Deputy O'Connor, it should continue to be used to assist in the drugs strategy. No final decision has been made on whether I will have responsibility for the fund or whether it will be under the remit of the Minister of State, Deputy Curran. The offices in the various Departments are trying to work together rather than saying "That is my money, take a hike". It does not really matter where responsibility for the fund lies as long as it is directed towards the ongoing drugs strategy.

I agree with Deputy Shatter that the monthly meetings with the HSE will help us to manage and tightly control the various issues within the HSE structure. I hope that will produce some results.

The Deputy suggested that more figures were produced in the 1980s than nowadays. I cannot contradict that assertion — perhaps it is true. I do not know whether the figures were coherent, or were capable of being used to form the basis for the development of a strategy. I do not know why the system that was in place at that time was discontinued. Such details have not been made known to me. I cannot comment further on the matter.

The 2006 and 2007 child care reports are due out this year. That is the latest information I have. I agree it is unsatisfactory that the reports have not been made available in a prompt manner. The relevance of annual reports begins to wane as we move further from the year for which they were collated. I accept the Deputy's proposal that I suggest to the HSE that it should publish these reports in a timely fashion. If the reports are to contribute to the decision making and strategy development process, they need to be fresh.

I agree that this committee, like every other forum, should ensure that it does not send out a negative message about social workers. Not only do social workers work at the front line, but they often have to put themselves in harm's way when dealing with difficult children and families. Social work is a great vocation but, as in the case of gardaí, there is an issue of morale. We need to support those working at the coalface delivering front-line services in communities. We must acknowledge that their work carries high physical risks and they must take difficult decisions in assessing risk. Deciding whether a child should be taken into care is an emotionally difficult decision. While I agree with the Deputy in this regard, leave is a problem and I do not deny that changes in leadership and management are required in this regard.

Acting Chairman

I thank Deputies for their contributions. I thank the Minister of State for briefing the select committee and answering Deputies' questions. I also this his officials for their attendance.