Tusla saw 500% jump in number of unaccompanied children needing a bed 

Tusla chief executive Kate Duggan  told the Public Accounts Committee that over the past four years Tusla saw a 500% increase in the number of separated children referred on from the International Protection Office for whom 'a bed has to be found for the night'. File picture: Brian Farrell

Child and family agency Tusla’s spend on special emergency arrangements for the provision of accommodation for children has risen 14-fold over the past four years, to €71m.  

The agency’s chief executive Kate Duggan told the Public Accounts Committee that during that time Tusla saw a 500% increase in the number of separated children referred on from the International Protection Office (IPO) for whom “a bed has to be found for the night”.

The increase has led to a dependency on special emergency arrangements given the scarcity of other accommodation around the country at a time of an unprecedented housing crisis and where beds for asylum-seekers and refugees of the war in Ukraine are at a premium, Ms Duggan said.

It was reported this week that one provider of special emergency 
accommodation, Ideal Care, had been found to have “fabricated” or “altered” the qualification checks and Garda vetting status of its staff, according to an internal Tusla report produced last year.

Those findings have since been referred to An Garda Síochána. Tusla, which ceased using Ideal Care as a provider of accommodation upon the discovery of the issue by its internal compliance unit, had previously paid the company some €10m for its services.

The number of children being accommodated via special emergency arrangements has increased steadily over the past two years, with more than 160 accessing such arrangements as of last August.

Earlier this month Tusla told the Irish Examiner that more than 20 children in State care had been reported missing to gardaí in January.

This included one child who had gone missing from a placement in the east of the country three times since late December.

At PAC on Thursday, Ms Duggan said the agency was seeing a “changing profile” in terms of the children who are accessing special emergency arrangements from Tusla.

She said of the 61 children currently accommodated in special emergency arrangements who are not international protection applicants, some 86% of them have come “directly from a breakdown in home”, whether that be related to “involvement in criminality, concerns around exploitation, concerns about addiction” on the part of the parents, or to an escalation in mental health concerns.

Ms Duggan said where “any suspicion” of harm to children is raised in special emergency accommodation, “we stopped using that company and where necessary sent it to An Garda Síochána”.

She said, however, Tusla had been reliant on “assurance” from the companies in question that its staff were fully qualified and Garda vetted.

“It’s the assurances we get from them,” she said. “We don’t see a copy of the vetting and qualifications, what we get is an assurance”.

She said Tusla had now put in place a “double lock”, where copies of qualifications and vetting certificates are provided by applicant companies.

When asked by Labour’s Alan Kelly what was being done to make sure “this can never happen again”, Ms Duggan said every child in Tusla’s charge “has a care plan” and is visited in their placement by social workers.

She said her organisation will require further capital investment from the State, adding there was an issue with the supply of staff that Tusla can avail of.

The meeting heard Tusla had spent roughly €15m on 90 agency staff over the past two years split across its divisions, a cost which is running 10% above that of directly employed staff.

"There’s an issue with supply,” Ms Duggan said. “This work is hard work,” she added.