CHILDREN'S REFERENDUM:THE REFERENDUM on children's rights, along with legislative and service changes, will be the "single most important set of reforms that have ever been made in the history of child protection in Ireland", Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald said.
Addressing the MacGill Summer School, Ms Fitzgerald said we had a “nationally shameful record” on protecting children. But it was “much easier to assign blame than to accept that a problem is complicated, systemic, cultural and societal”.
Those problems had not gone away with the Ryan report, the State apology to survivors or with the setting-up of the redress scheme for those abused.
“Many of the settings changed; but problems remained. As is proven by the report of the Independent Child Death Review Group,” she said.
Ms Fitzgerald said progress had been made, including the establishment of the Child and Family Support Agency and the move to put the Children First guidelines on a statutory footing.
Additional social workers had also been recruited but there was still a distance left to go. There was still no national framework for services, no proper data collection, no standard approach to assessing risk and no effective inter-agency working between bodies funded by the public. The result was “a chaotic system” that had become “astonishingly unfit for purpose”.
Speaking earlier, the Minister said the wording for the children’s rights referendum would be published in time for plenty of discussion with all interested groups.
Norah Gibbons, director of advocacy with children’s charity Barnardos and co-author of the report on child deaths, said one of the greatest challenges faced by the new agency would be its role in combating the impact of intergenerational poverty on children.
Fr Peter McVerry, a well-known campaigner on behalf of homeless young people, spoke at the same session. It was moderated by Carl O’Brien, Chief Reporter with The Irish Times.