Officials concerned about beggar children
Files show members of the public had been contacting the office of then taoiseach Jack Lynch from early 1978, raising the issue of children begging and apparently homeless in and around the O’Connell Street area.
Replies state that the matter was being investigated and internal notes show it was referred to the ministers for health and justice, but it was a full year later before any official returns to the subject.
A handwritten note from Sean Aylward in the taoiseach’s department to Mr Lynch’s assistant private secretary states: “I think it would be timely to renew our enquires with the Ministers for Health and Justice about the children who beg and sleep rough in the city centre area. We will be having some important ‘tourists’ this year and could do without the type of publicity child vagrants could bring.”
The biggest tourist event of the year was the arrival of Pope John Paul II.
Charles Haughey, then minister for social welfare, replied that he was making “urgent enquiries” and would be in touch again as soon as possible but his colleague, Justice Minister Gerry Collins, furnished a more detailed — if not exactly helpful — reply in a letter dated May 1979.
He said he had been in contact with the Garda authorities and they had informed him that they estimated 20-30 children were sleeping rough. “The Gardaí also say the begging indulged in by itinerant children is a pretence to cover up their main activity — larceny from tourists and elderly ladies. The Gardaí also say that there is little the Gardaí can do about it in the absence of a centre where these children can be referred by the courts.”
The letter continued: “The Gardaí feel strongly about the provision of a place of safety where children who beg and sleep rough can be committed by the courts. At present there is no place to which these youngsters can be referred if they are found begging on the streets and the fact that it is known to the children concerned encourages them to continue their present activities.”
In fact, documents show the Gardaí had made numerous representations about the provision of a 24-hour place of safety for children out of home where they could be properly cared for in the short-term until their needs could be properly assessed and decisions made as to whether they should be simply brought home or referred for residential care with attendant educational and psychological supports.
Thirty years later, the need for such facilities is still not adequately met and it is clear from the files that the Government of the time wanted to make no commitment on the issue.
In preparation for a reply to a parliamentary question raised by then Fine Gael TD Michael Keating, a memo was compiled for Justice Minister Gerry Collins in which it is advised that these are social problems and “are not appropriate to be dealt with by the Gardaí”.
