Paul Murphy: Children Warehoused in Airbnbs, Childcare Crisis

Thanks. Minister O'Gorman opened by saying that child protection is simply too important to be used as a political football. In fairness to Minister O'Gorman, he didn't engage in political football through his speech, he set out some issues, I will get into them, but very inadequate approach in terms of his department, but he spoke about the issues of child protection. That approach of not using this as a political football lasted for as long as Minister O'Gorman was speaking, and then all subsequent government speakers, in reality, were all about using it as a political football. That's why we're debating this today, shamefully, is for the topic to be used as a political football. And I think most people around the country are quite unhappy to see that this is how this issue is being treated. I'm not interested in engaging in that, I'm interested in raising some very serious issues of child protection that are the responsibility of this government, a government that has had the power to remedy all of these serious issues for the last five years, a government that has chosen not to remedy the serious child protection failures which are ongoing across the state right now. It tells you a lot about where the government's priorities lie, which I believe are not with child protection, instead it's with corporate protection. protecting the interests of the interests of big business and the wealthy in this country and to hell with everyone else, including particularly vulnerable children. The Ombudsman for Children said last July that the state should ask itself how it has fallen so far that it is not to remedy the serious child protection failures that are ongoing across the state right now. The Ombudsman for Children said last July that the state should ask itself how it has fallen so far that it is unable to provide a highly vulnerable child in the care of the state with a safe and stable place to live, a social worker, a trusted adult that they know will care for them. He answered that question a combination of government intransigence and neglect. That neglect is obvious when you look at how children in the care of the state and in the care of private companies contracted and paid for by the state, as well as families themselves sometimes having to pay, which I will come on to, how they are being treated. The Child Law Project reported last July that judges are in despair over the lack of appropriate places for children in care and that this is having a domino effect that risks collapsing the care system. One judge warned that the lack of places is a tsunami about to reach shore and nothing is being done. He said it was only by the graces of God that some of the kids involved were still alive. The government's response? Not to deal with the crisis in the childcare system but to end funding for the Child Law Project. To shut down the only public source of information we have on the childcare system. Researchers have not been sent to observe court proceedings since June because funding for the project has been axed. We have reference in the Minister's speech about a new reporting system sharing the opinion that court reporting is important and should be retained into the future. That would give the impression that it is happening right now. It is not happening right now. It needs to be reinstated. It seems that it will be several months at least before a new reporting system is established. We need a date. We should have had a date from the Minister today about when this vital reporting will be re-established. Fears that children without an appropriate care place are at risk of death is well grounded. Last year 29 young people in care, in after care or known to Tusla died. 23 died in 2022. The reality is that those tragic deaths are only the tip of the iceberg. What lies beneath is a maelstrom of under-resourcing and state neglect. The crisis in childcare places is now so bad that vulnerable children are routinely being warehoused in Airbnbs, in holiday homes, operated by private, for-profit companies and staffed by unqualified attendants. Of course the companies involved are making a tidy profit. Primetime reported last May that 166 minors were left in this type of unsuitable private accommodation. Shockingly that includes babies, toddlers and preschoolers as well as older kids. Conditions in some cases are so bad that charity workers and social workers have been left in tears after visiting the children. Of course the government knows all of this, this is not news, it chooses not to fix it despite the billions available to it. It chooses not to improve wages and conditions for social workers, not to finance the construction of purpose-built, appropriate care facilities, not to support families so as to prevent children being taken into care in the first place. With respect to supporting families, the government is failing very badly. I have been trying to highlight repeatedly in this doll the way that the supervised access system is being exploited by unscrupulous private companies. It illustrates the failure to support parents and the failings in the public system. Current and former access supervisors as well as parents have contacted me to explain how this has become an ethics free exploitation zone for profit hungry private companies. Unlike every other European country, we have no public supervised access service. It is exclusively provided by private companies. So the state in the form of courts say the only way you are going to see your kids is with supervised access. But the state refuses to provide any service for that. Private companies are the only ones who provide it. Parents have no choice but to pay large sums of money to private companies to see their children. I have a costings list from one of those companies, supervised access Ireland. The rates are €34.75 an hour from 10 to 6 Monday to Saturday, 44.50 an hour on Sunday. If a parent wants to see their child for four hours, they have to pay between €139 and €178. It is more than a third of your weekly wages if you are on the minimum wage. It is up to three quarters of your weekly payments for someone on job seekers allowance. On top of that, some private companies are additionally overcharging parents. One parent forced to use the services of supervised access Ireland said they had to pay for a three hour visit when they were getting two hours. They had to pay for a four hour visit when they were getting three. It is hard to comprehend this as anything other than state sanctioned form of ransom and a very profitable ransom at that. Supervised access Ireland charges parents more than double what they pay supervisors in their wages for the equivalent time. And it is children as well as parents who suffer from this. Kids cannot see their parents because the parents cannot afford the extortionate fees that the private companies charge. I asked the Taoiseach about this last summer. I asked if any financial assistance could be provided for parents. He replied, it is the responsibility of the parents to pay for access arrangements and they are obliged to pay private companies for the service. I acknowledge the stress that this can cause for families. So the Taoiseach acknowledges the stress for vulnerable kids missing their mother, missing their father, but he doesn't propose to do anything about it despite having a €25 billion surplus. Bear in mind that children in access situations have already lost a significant amount of contact with their parent. And now the state is standing over a situation that makes it harder for them to rebuild their relationship with parents that want to see them, that want to rebuild their relationship. It is cruelty by the state to the children. To make matters worse, the service being provided by some of these private companies is substandard to put it mildly. Employees have told me, and I quote, workers were hired and sent on shift without any face-to-face interviews, or even the most basic of checks. In more than one instance, an access worker was sent out without any guard of editing being done, as well as not having appropriate checks with regards to indemnity insurance. This was allowed to happen with vulnerable children who are in the care of the state all over the country and facilitated by the company to maximise profits. They maximise profits at the expense of the safety and wellbeing of children. When I raised this scandal in parliamentary questions to the minister, he claimed that Tusla ceased using the services of this particular company in February 2024. However, Tusla records show that they have paid the same company over €100,000 for their services for this year in 2024, which would be a very, very large sum if they were only working for six weeks. I also have it on good authority that supervised access jobs are still being advertised by the company in question. Perhaps the minister, if there is a sum up at the end, could address this, and at the very least pledge to investigate it. If the government is serious about child protection, and is not just using it as a political football to score points, it must actually act to fix the broken child protection system. The final point I'll make is another party leader referenced that if there was a complaint made against a senior elected representative in their party, that she would know about it. I think that's very troubling. I think that good practice here is to have an independent process that the party leader is not told. I don't know whether Mary Lou McDonald was told or not, but I do know that good practice would be for her not to be told about a complaint. Things should be done genuinely independently. I think that was quite concerning and I think questions need to be asked there.