Gardaí working on plan to share child abuse information

Report found children who have been sexually abused are facing 'undue delays' accessing the justice system in Ireland.

Garda HQ says it is developing a data-sharing agreement with Tusla to clear a long-running blockage preventing the transmission of important information in child sex abuse cases between the agencies at specialist facilities.

The confirmation follows a heavily-critical report from the European Union and the Council of Europe into conflicting approaches by the agencies operating in a new dedicated unit for child victims of abuse.

The Barnahus facility, currently based in Galway, brings together forensic, health, therapeutic and policing services under one roof to ease the trauma for children and their parents.

Ireland set up the pilot in September 2019 and it began taking referrals in November 2020 under the name ‘Barnahus West’.

Barnahus South is due to open in Cork by the end of the year, followed by Barnahus East in Dublin.

The EU-CoE report consulted with gardaí, the HSE, Tusla, Children’s Health Ireland and the Departments of Children, Justice and Health.

The report said: “One of the main findings of the inception report is that in some areas, particularly data and information exchange and interagency coordination, different agencies have differing and even opposing views on the functioning of the Barnahus model.” 

It recommended a wider interpretation of the law, development of a new law, or development of guidelines and checklists regarding information sharing, GDPR policies and data protection.

“The Children First Act allows too much flexibility and is vague on the procedural requirements for joint working,” it said. “The legal position on data / information sharing is too open to interpretation and has little focus on the best interest of the child.” 

Following queries from the Irish Examiner, An Garda Síochána said: “The sharing of information within Barnahus is a priority for the partner agencies involved. A core element of the Barnahus model is multidisciplinary and interagency collaboration.

“To achieve this, a specific data-sharing agreement is to be developed for the Barnahus service to ensure appropriate information sharing and data protection procedures are adhered to in accordance with the best interests of the child.” 

The CoE report also said there was a need for a national policy “requiring and defining” interagency coordination between An Garda Síochána, Tusla, Children’s Health Ireland and HSE as well as the development of a joint agency approach to service improvement focused on the best interest of the child and on mitigating delays.

The report found children who have been sexually abused are facing “undue delays” accessing the justice system in Ireland, with specialists at Barnahus citing a waiting time of between two and nine years.

The Ombudsman for Children said the children have to go through “multiple interviews” because there is no clear approach among agencies, which has the potential to be “traumatising and creates huge delays”.

The Department of Children previously said the report was the first step in identifying issues: “Next steps for the project include an in-depth legal and policy review, which will be commencing soon, and a training gap analysis, which is already under way.”