A deafening silence: Childline’s night service faces axe despite Taoiseach’s vow to safeguard children

Despite Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s pledge to safeguard children as a "national priority", the only 24-hour helpline for children in crisis faces closure in January due to a lack of funding.

The plug will be pulled on Childline, the Irish Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children (ISPCC) helpline night service, which has received almost 40,000 calls so far this year, unless €1.2m can be raised to plug a funding deficit.

After hearing that an extra €2m in funding will be made available by the Government to prevent the closure of some of the country’s best-known museums, Childline volunteer and fundraiser Monica Rowe said she decided to write to Mr Kenny this week to express her anger.

“I was listening to the radio on Friday and I heard that some museums might have to close or charge a small fee as they needed funding and before the day was out €2m was found. Honestly, my blood boiled when I saw how quickly that money was found when we need €1.2m before the end of the month just to break even and keep open a vital service for children.”

Ms Rowe wrote that she was struck by the “deafening silence” that met the charity in response to its funding call, especially in light of Mr Kenny’s promise to ensure the safety of children was a national priority.

“I went back over old statements made by Taoiseach Enda Kenny on the welfare and was struck by his speech in the wake of the Cloyne Report in 2011.

“I read his words about children being ‘the most precious possession of all’ and that ‘safeguarding their integrity and innocence must be a national priority’.

“I just thought, here we have museums on one hand and vulnerable children on the other.”

For the past 15 years, Childline has been available to children on a 24-hour basis, with more than 300,000 contacts made this year and 184,000 calls to the end of August.

ISPCC has described the night-time service as “critical”, as late-night calls are often from children who, due to domestic circumstances, cannot call at other times and are often experiencing serious abuse, fear, isolation, and confusion.

ISPCC pointed out that, based on information provided to Childline this year, it contacted gardaí in 74 cases and made 38 child protection referrals to the Child and Family Agency.

ISPCC interim chief executive Caroline O’Sullivan said the charity has sent Children’s Minister James Reilly a proposal on the need for funding for the service to the department and has recently requested to meet the minister again as it has received no commitment to funding.

She said the charity had managed to raise €330,000 of the €1.2m so far but that the public could not donate as much as in the past as “they simply don’t have it”.

“The Government haven’t funded us for 25 years and we have never gone cap in hand looking for money but now we are looking for the Government to say: ‘We know how important the service is’ and meet us halfway,” she said. “When we don’t need them, we will happily say ‘thank you’ and go back to what we have been doing in the past.”

A spokesman for Dr Reilly confirmed he had met with representatives from the charity and understood the current vulnerability of the Childline service. He said Dr Reilly had received the ISPCC’s funding proposal and that it was “under consideration”.

Jillian van Turnhout, former head of the Children’s Rights Alliance and now a senator, also called on the Government to intervene and “at the very least, meet them half way”. “We cannot, with all we now know, cease answering children’s calls,” she said. “Childline provides a vital listening service for all children.”