Sharon Keogan: Families Must Not Be Kept in the Dark

Are you moving your amendment first? Sorry, I'm moving. I'm moving all my amendments. Graeme Longo. There's quite a string of them there today, but... So I'm rising today to find myself with the task of speaking in all my amendments at once, whether that is the good fortune or bad fortune, I will allow you to decide. However, it is certainly more efficient in a sense, and certainly appropriate, as all my amendments are linked by common aims. These to check the role of the Family and Care Agency, or TSLA as we commonly know it, as the effective gatekeeper in the legislation, and to strengthen the role of other voices, particularly of the family and kin. Before I go any further, if the Chair will permit, I would like to take a moment to recognise and praise the Trojan work done by David French and his family, again here today, and that of the Minister in bringing this legislation before us here today. We should count ourselves lucky if, God forbid, we were to fall victim to such horrific circumstances as his sister Valerie and her children, that we should have siblings so dedicated to set things right. He has truly honoured his late sister's legacy, and set an example of strength and power of familial love. Amendment 1. I move to my first amendment, which seeks to create a system for notification of relatives in guardianship proceedings. This amendment seeks to change the Principle 1964 Guardianship Act directly. While I had initially considered a system for the notification of relatives only in the cases outlined in the Bill, I believe it is better to add in a broader umbrella amendment which would cover the cases outlined in the Bill. Because cases such as murder of one spouse by another will not only be the only cases in which a child will be left without a guardian, and only adding a family notification requirement for cases outlined under Valerie's law would create an inequality between cases. I recognise that the 1964 Act does contain numerous provisions to allow for a family to apply for guardianship. The aim of this amendment is to make a relatively simple but, I believe, quite fundamental shift to an overall structure of guardianship law, which is to shift from passive to active family rights. Because, put simply, it's all very well that an aunt or a sibling of a child finding themselves without a guardian can apply for guardianship according to the letter of the law. But it is another matter to ensure that the family members know they can apply for guardianship. The simple fact is that a substantial number of people in this country never take advantage of their rights because they are simply not aware of them. This amendment seeks to rectify that. It's very easy to imagine a man or a woman who is aware that they have a nephew or a niece is to be without a guardian, either because their parents have passed away or are in fact simply unfit to be guardians. And that man or woman simply does nothing because they have no idea that they might be entitled to apply for guardianship of that child, or even to simply to weigh in that child's guardianship proceedings. But I am sure that if any person were to receive a letter informing them of the situation of their nephew or their niece or their grandchild or so on, that many of them would at a minimum get involved in the proceedings and give the court a broader perspective on the child's welfare. And if many of them were informed in that letter that they have or may have a right to apply for guardianship where that is the case, then the state would find more often than we think a willing guardian, something which would not only relieve the strain on our social services, but would very often find a more organic and healthy environment for the child concerned. I believe that there are similar amendments to mine made during the Dáil debates on this bill, and were rejected partially on the grounds that no definition of family was provided. So in this amendment, I have done so. Now, before anyone orders that this list of relatives is too exhaustive and would clog up the system with endless administration, let me point out the countermeasure. The phrase, insofar as is reasonably practicable, is in subsection 1, acts as a vital common sense safety valve. It ensures that neither TUSLA nor the applicant is forced to achieve the impossible. It means that while the readily available maternal grandmother or aunts or local adult siblings must be actively informed, the system will not be held up or paralysed by a mandatory hunt for a distant cousin who lives overseas and has no relationship with the child. Furthermore, subsection 5 places the ultimate discretion squarely where it belongs with the judge. The court must simply be satisfied that all reasonable steps have been taken. If TUSLA demonstrates it has made an honest, practical effort to notify the child's known immediate family network, the judge has the full authority to rule that the statutory burden has been met and proceeds with the case. This amendment does not create a heavy, unworkable checklist for social workers. Rather, it uses strict language to stop TUSLA from completely shutting out a child's family, while providing the court with the necessary flexibility to ensure a speedy, efficient process that keeps the child's best interests paramount. Additionally, it empowers the applicant to make use of the other bodies in the state, insofar as there is no breach of standing data law. Amendment 3 and 4, moving further into section 3, we come to my amendments regarding the requirement of the court to seek and consider extended views. I have tabled these as a staggered option for section 12c. Amendment 3 is my preferred robust option. It makes the gathering of a family and others' views a firm statutory precondition. It states that the making of a guardianship removal order shall be subject to the court making reasonable efforts to obtain the input of family members and independent professionals. We cannot allow life-altering decisions about a child's legal structure to occur behind closed doors with only the state, TUSLA and the offender in the room. However, if the Minister objects to that strict precondition on administrative grounds, I have provided amendment 4 as a flexible fallback option. This fallback uses the phrase, where practicable, to grant the judiciary immediate flexibility. It establishes a clear, positive mandate encouraging the court to look outside the institutional vacuum of TUSLA and the convicted guardian, explicitly drawing on wider family networks and any appointed guardian ad litem. Amendment 5, similarly, I have applied the exact same principle to section 12d under amendment 5, which deals with cases where a parent has survived a serious, non-fatal assault. Here, the dynamic changes dramatically. The other guardian is very much alive, but they are a recovering victim. My amendment explicitly hardcodes the victim guardian directly into the list of mandatory voices that the court must seek out and listen to. It ensures that a traumatised parent cannot be sidelined by TUSLA's legal team, while simultaneously mandating that the wider family and the independent professionals are engaged to build a comprehensive picture of the child's environment. This brings me to what I believe is the most fundamental shift proposed in this package. Amendment 7, which seeks to insert section 12dA, granting the family a direct right to apply for the removal or restriction of guardianship. As the bill is currently drafted, TUSLA virtually holds a total monopoly. If a parent kills the other parent, only TUSLA can choose to initiate a case. If TUSLA drops the ball, if TUSLA delays, or if TUSLA forms a view that differs from the family, the victim's family is left entirely powerless. My amendment breaks that bottleneck. It allows a relative, be it a grandparent, an aunt or an uncle, or an adult sibling, who has legitimate concerns for the child's safety to walk directly into a court and sue to strip the killer's guardianship rights. Crucially, subsection 8 explicitly states that this application can be made independently of and notwithstanding any actions or inaction by TUSLA. To prevent any malicious litigation, subsection 9 gives the judge full power to throw out any application that is frivolous or vexatious. Likewise, if there are multiple applications, it gives the court the right to direct that those applications may be heard at the same time. Overall, the principle of this amendment, as with most of them, is to involve family. Because I feel that the bulk of the objections to these amendments will be that by involving family, by giving family rights of application and by mandating that they should be notified of proceedings and that by doing this will introduce too many variables into the court case. Yet I think this objection would be hypercritical. Because on one hand, we find that it is good enough for a family to take the initiative to alter our national statutory legislation, as David French and his family have bravely done. But on the other hand, we don't think a family is good enough to apply for guardianship removal. That is not consistent. Furthermore, I want to draw the House's attention to the vital shield we have built into subsection 7 of the amendment 7. Under our current flawed family law system, if a courageous grandmother or aunt or uncle tries to step in and protect a child, a high-earning defence solicitor representing the convicted killer can immediately turn around and drag that grieving family through the mud with retaliatory counter suits for access or custody under the 1964 Act. My amendments put a definite stop to this legal harassment. It explicitly locks the abuser out from weaponising section 6A or 8 against the family, ensuring that the court system can never be used as a tool of ongoing control and trauma from behind prison bars. Finally, we must look at how these rules tie together procedurally under section 11L, which handles notice parties. I want to be entirely transparent with the House about how these final two amendments operate. Amendment 17 provides the necessary legal machinery for the family's right to apply. It mandates that if a relative launches a case independently under section 12DA, notice must be served on TUSLA, given the agency an automatic right to apply to be joined to the proceedings. Therefore, amendment 17 relies entirely on the passage of amendment 7. If this House chooses to grant families the right to act, amendment 17 is the bridge that keeps TUSLA involved as a supportive partner. However, if the committee rejects that right and chooses to maintain TUSLA's monopoly over initiating cases, I ask you to look at amendment 18, which must be seen as our vital stand-alone fallback. Even if the state refuses to let a grandmother launch a lawsuit, is it an absolute injustice to let TUSLA run that lawsuit while leaving family members in the dark, and more accurately, even potentially leaving them in the dark, which would be a failure of good law in my view? Amendment 18 does not rely on amendment 7. It stands completely on its own. It established a strict duty to notify, forcing TUSLA, insofar as reasonably practical, to actively track down and notify the next of kin or adult relatives whenever the state moves to restrict a killer's guardianship. Once more, I would note that we are coming full circle here, as like my first amendment, it transforms what is currently a passive right to join a case into an active, informed safeguard to ensure no family is left in the dark. It is likely that the Minister will tell this House that TUSLA already involves extended families whenever it is appropriate to do so. But that is exactly the problem. Right now, the system relies entirely on TUSLA's own discretion. They hold all the cards as an unaccountable gatekeeper. By shifting this requirement into a strict statutory mandate under amendments 1 and 7, and locking it in place with the notice machinery of amendments 17 and 18, we are using the power of primary legislation to force them to act against their own gatekeeping instincts. Under amendments 17, if a family initiates a case, TUSLA is stripped of its powers to block it. They are legally brought in as a notification party to assist the family, not command them. And under our fallback amendment 18, if TUSLA tries to run a case in the shadows, they are statutorily compelled to actively notify the next of kin. We are stripping away their choice to ignore the family. With this complete framework, TUSLA will no longer be the masters of who gets into the courtroom. They will be legally compelled servants of the court, held directly accountable by the judge. So, in summary, dear colleagues, while we evaluate this legislation package in its entirety, we are looking at the comprehensive interlocking strategy to fundamentally rebalance Irish family law away from institutional monopoly and back towards family kinship care. By passing amendment 1, we shift the entire structural landscape of the 1964 Act from passive to active rights, creating an all-encompassing notification system that ensures aunts, uncles and grandparents are automatically invited to protect children in their darkest hours, completely protected by common sense administrative and GDPR safety vows. With amendments 3, 4 and 5, we shatter the glass door and the closed door court secrecy of TUSLA-led prosecutions under Valerie's law, guaranteeing through primary mandated and staggered fallbacks that the voices of extended family, independent specialists and recovering victims' parents can never be sidelined by state attorneys. And with amendment 7, supported by the notice machinery of amendments 18 and 17, we demolish TUSLA's exclusive gatekeeping monopoly. We give blood relatives the legal autonomy to independently apply to remove an abuser's guardianship, armed with an iron-clad statutory shield that prevents the offender from launching retaliatory custody lawsuits against a grieving family. If this state truly believes in the power of the family network, if we truly intend to honour the legacy of Valerie French and the tireless campaigning of her kin, then we must stop treating relatives as silent bystanders in state-controlled courtrooms. We must pass this full package, dismantle these artificial bureaucratic bottlenecks and transform the extended family into active, legal, protected partners in safeguarding Ireland's children. So I commend these amendments to the House, and Minister, I hope you will consider accepting some of them and realise I just don't want TUSLA to be that final gatekeeper in this particular piece of legislation. Thank you.