Audit of emergency garda powers to take children from parents

Gardaí are about to organise an independent audit of its use of emergency powers regarding the removal of children from their parents.

This will examine the circumstances of the cases and whether or not the ethnic background of the children and their families played any role in the decisions.

The audit was a central recommendation of the so-called Roma report, which inquired into the removal of two children by gardaí from their Roma parents in October 2013 on suspicion they might have been abducted.