The ISPCC yesterday unveiled a project to tackle street begging by children but came under fire for allegedly failing to involve travellers in its work. The Leanbh project will see three full-time workers and, ultimately, 100 volunteers watching Dublin's streets for child beggars. They will work with the children's parents to stop sending them out to beg.
A survey based on 14 days last month found 150 children begging, the ISPCC said yesterday. "A majority, but by no means all, of these children were from the travelling community, many were homeless children and a tiny proportion were refugee children."
The ISPCC chief executive, Mr Cian O Tighearnaigh, said project workers would contact gardai when they saw children begging. Gardai would take the children to a Garda station and a Leanbh worker would wait with the child until the parents arrived. They would then seek to make an arrangement with the families to work with them and to link them with various social services.
Travellers told The Irish Times yesterday that the very small minority of families involved in street begging rarely turned up at Garda stations to collect their children. Instead, the children were brought home by gardai whom the children sometimes directed to a nearby halting site - only going home when the coast was clear.
Mr O Tighearnaigh said in such cases Leanbh workers would accompany the children home, either in the Garda car or in a car which would follow the Garda car. After they got to know the families, contact at the Garda station would no longer be necessary.
However, Ms Ronnie Fay, of Pavee Point Travellers' Centre, Dublin, expressed concern at yesterday's launch. She said there had not been enough consultation with traveller organisations. Representatives of the Leanbh project had met Pavee Point the previous day for an hour. "I don't call that proper consultation."
She said there were about 5,000 travellers in Dublin but fewer than 20 families sent their children to beg in the street. The exploitation of children must be "condemned out of hand".
But she criticised the perspective which saw traveller children begging as an issue which had to be dealt with while ignoring the conditions the children lived in on sites. She also said that travellers should be closely involved in projects of this kind.
Mr O Tighearnaigh said it was open to travellers as well as settled people to apply to become voluntary workers.
In an exchange with Ms Fay, he said the ISPCC looked on street begging as a child protection issue. But if the project found that conditions on the sites were causing the problem, "I assure you we will make more noise about it than you have ever heard."