Sharon Keogan: Were unaccompanied minors left exposed?

and I honestly want to wish you the best of luck but you know I have serious issues with Tuesday and Kate will be familiar with some of the stuff that I've brought up over the years. There's one particular case that I have been working on for well over a year and that is to do with unaccompanied minors and this is what I want you to do. I want you to be better at what we do. There was a case in May 2022 where we had, obviously with the Ukrainian war, we had a charity that took in 113 adults and there was 59 of those children that were unaccompanied. So obviously they just landed into the airport, Tuesday had no idea that they were coming and on the spot guardianship was given to some of the adults that were on the same flight as those children, on the spot guardianship. There was no involvement with Tuesday in relation to the vetting, you seem to have washed your hands of it, you didn't even get, none of these children were looked after by Tuesday at all. You just wipe your hands clean of it. So there was no investigating in relation to the vetting of the families that the children went to. So my question is, should that happen again and should children land in in large numbers, even six or eight children come in, unaccompanied minors come in on a given day, how are you going to handle that in the future? I can't comment on the particular case. But do you think that's right? Do you think that on the spot guardianship should be given to children that arrive in, unaccompanied minors, should that be the way things run? I'm very familiar with the case. In here in the Oireachtas, when we came out and got the phone call to say that, because I think that only happened to ones that were referred to the same issue. But it could happen again. It could, but my understanding is that nobody knew across government that this was happening and this was a private arrangement and that the individual parents of those children gave permission for the adults on the group to be the guardians for their children. It was a time of significant crisis in Ukraine. That's not what happened. Sorry, in terms of, it was never referred to, I'm not very happy to deal with that particular issue, but my recollection of the event was that parents wanted to get their children out of Ukraine and there was an opportunity through this mission. And that they had already made private arrangements with families in the particular part of the country in terms of, you know, kind of respite and holiday break. But certainly I'm not familiar with a particular case, but delighted to talk to you offline on it. Yeah, but some of those children were obviously moved on then to homes in the area, male and outside of male, and they didn't stay with that guardian that was appointed at the airport. You know, they're not going to be able to talk about specific cases. No, I know that, but this is really concerning because it's going to happen again because we're dealing with war throughout the world. Deputy, or Senator Gilbert, you know they cannot talk about specific cases. I understand that, but in the future, in the future, in the future, should that happen again, Toosla didn't really get involved after that. After that day, there was nothing really that Toosla did in relation to duty of care to those individuals. Senator, you're still talking about a specific case. I know, but should it happen again, will Toosla take a more active role in unaccompanied minors coming into the state in large numbers? So I have to say Toosla take a completely active role in terms of unaccompanied minors coming to the state. Yeah. So if you talk, I mean, we receive our referrals from the International Protection for the Department of Justice. Yes. So where a young person arrives unaccompanied, it is up to the Department of Justice to complete the age assessment for that young person. Should they believe them to be a minor, they then refer them to Toosla. And when we get a referral, we act on that referral, and that's around determining the safety, to determine are they with an adult, to determine if they need to come into the care of the state. And so we have about 130 unaccompanied minors currently who are in the care of the state. It is deemed that they need to come into care. And the others were of an appropriate age, almost 17 and almost 18, that they're being accommodated by us under Section 5 of the Act. So where Toosla receives a referral, that referral is made, and we act on that referral in terms of the information available to us to know if support is needed or if there's any risk to the child's safety. I just feel that those children were let down very badly, and that is my opinion. Thank you.