AS I SEE IT
BY MARIANNE HERON
The unanswered question in many of our minds is how can a child like Kyran Durnin disappear but the alarm is only sounded two years later? The six-year-old boy who had been attending school in Dundalk was last seen in May/June 2022. Tusla, the Child and Family Agency (CFA), had Kyran, his mother and two siblings on their radar, but the little boy was not reported missing until August this year.
How this happened is the subject of two internal enquiries to be reported to Roderic O’Gorman Minister for Children and Minister for Education Norma Foley and cannot be published due to the Garda investigation.
Whatever happened Kyran, now the subject of a possible murder investigation, appears to have fallen through the cracks of a system intended to safeguard children. The shocking fact is that Kyran is not alone, an alarming number of children have died under Tusla/CFA’s and the State’s watch, 53 of them in the last three years.
Distressing data obtained by Peadar Tobin of Aontu, shows that 201 children have died, either while in the care of CFA or under the child protection notification system in the 10 years since Tusla/CFA was founded in 2014 to safeguard and protect children. The causes of death are attributed to natural causes (97), homicides (9) suicides (32) drug overdose (6) road accidents (16) other accidents (16) and unknown causes (25).
These appalling figures suggest that there are more cracks in the system which allowed Kyran to disappear and that the provisions designed to keep vulnerable children safe are failing. Equally disturbing is the report from UCD’s Sexual Exploitation Research Programme (SERP), which found that children, mainly girls, were being abused and sometimes raped by men while under Tusla CFA’s watch.
Just where the problems lie with the system is brought to critical light in the Child Law Project’s report based on judicial child care proceedings from 2021-2024 with a section titled appropriately ‘Falling Through the Cracks.’. The cases “include numerous incidents of abuse and chronic neglect, encompassing serious sexual assault, death threats and non-accidental injury ….. a significant proportion of cases make reference to the child also having special needs and disabilities,” states the project.
Among the issues highlighted are the need for significant inter-agency co-operation, the lack of specialist units for child care placements like those in the UK, the need for detention in a therapeutic environment, the shortage of appropriate care placements compared to other jurisdictions and the lack of appropriate psychological services, including in-patient care. The report found nine cases of child victims of sex trafficking or exploitation. It is glaringly obvious from the report that these shortcomings have been there for years and have not been addressed.
Interviewed on RTE Kate Duggan, chief executive of Tisla/CFA, stated that the agency’s level of referrals now runs at 90,000 a year, 60% of which are welfare concerns where other services are involved. Their 2023 report states under “demand on services’: “ There is a risk to the safety, well-being and welfare of children due to the insufficient capacity/resources to meet existing levels of service demand for Children in Care, Child Protection and Welfare.”
The report describes 260,773 children (0-17) as being in ’enforced deprivation’. According to Tusla’s 2022 report in the last quarter 32% of cases waited more than three months before a social worker was allocated.
There is a historic narrative around cruelty and lack of protection of children here, including Mother and Baby homes and sexual abuse in religious-run schools. It seems that narrative is continuing, where 4,500 children are homeless, where treatments are delayed and so many vulnerable children are at risk, even of death. Noeline Blackwell of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre has said: ”The whole issue around children who are the most vulnerable is how hidden they have been.”
It’s time to ensure that children, who have no voice of their own, are put first. A start might be to have a separate Ministry for Children, rather than one which is crowded together with Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth on Minister Roderic O’Gorman’s desk.
*Tusla has 17 centres in the 32 counties. Their help line (0818776315) is only open 9-5 weekdays, outside these times the Gardai should be notified.
