Aontú: Govt must ask serious questions about State childcare

Speaking after the publication of the Child Law Project’s latest report, a report which concluded that the State child care system in the country is in “crisis”, Aontú leader Peadar Toibin said that he has “no doubt” about the recent judgment of the advisory body and that it’s high time Government started asking very “serious” questions about the ongoing deficits in the State child care system.

Speaking to The Irish Catholic, Mr Tóibín outlined the problems currently hindering the provision of State child care services and said that Government decisions are exacerbating the situation and endangering children.

“There’s no doubt about it” (the system being in crisis), he said. “There’s no doubt that so many of the State services are completely disjointed in terms of the protection of children. There’s no doubt that many of the State services are overwhelmed with the numbers coming through and under resourced in terms of ability to help.

“There’s no doubt as well that the Government are making decisions around what’s called ‘Special Emergency Arrangements’. These are unregulated State care accommodation that often has unvetted staff where children are going missing from. Academics have shown that these children are getting targeted for sexual exploitation.”

Pointing out that numerous elements of the services are in turmoil, Mr Tóibín said that this level of dysfunction is directly responsible for children going missing and it’s a trend that media and opposition parties are seemingly unwilling to address because of the socioeconomic profile of those usually involved.

“Three major elements of the services are collapsing at the moment and until they’re dealt with, we’re going to see more children go missing,” he said. “We found out that 227 children have died in the last 10 years – that’s practically a child a month. 11 children were murdered as well in that period of time. The Government have very serious questions to ask in relation to this.

“Most of the opposition have ignored this issue over the last while. The reason being, to a certain extent, is that these children are from poor backgrounds, often broken homes who don’t have any wealth, power or influence and as a result what’s happening to them is invisible at one level. If these were coming from leafy suburbs and wealthy or powerful families, this would be a continuous debate in the Dáil and on the front pages of our newspapers.

“The Child Law Project was a solution in terms of trying to bring these cases to light and trying to create transparency in this situation and now the Government have defunded them so they don’t even have the facilities to do this anymore.”