Irish Examiner view: Care of our most vulnerable must be given top priority

A 10-year-old child is missing, and a National Review Panel report into Kyran Durnin cannot be published: The State must safeguard the welfare of the most vulnerable and voiceless members of our society

On the same day this week we learned that a 10-year-old is missing after Tusla failed to locate him, and a report on another missing child, Kyran Durnin, cannot be published. Stock picture

The news that a 10-year-old child is missing after Tusla, the child and family agency, failed to locate him is a distressing development, and what makes it even more distressing is that this is a narrative that is becoming more and more familiar.

Gardaí are now looking into this case and investigating whether the boy has moved to another country. There is evidence that he was in Ireland in September but did not return to school, and Tusla eventually referred the case to gardaí last month.

What makes this case all the more resonant is that it came the same day — last Wednesday — that children’s minister Norma Foley confirmed that a National Review Panel report into another missing child, Kyran Durnin, could not be published. 

Readers will be familiar with the lengthy investigation into the circumstances of Kyran’s disappearance: He has not been seen alive since June 2022 and is presumed to be dead.

The fact that this report will not be published has drawn criticism from the chief executive of the Children’s Rights Alliance, Tanya Ward, for instance.

However, she also rightly acknowledged just how complex this situation is “...because there’s a lot of movement of children between the south and north of the country, a lot of movement between the rest of the United Kingdom. And you have over five thousand children now in homeless accommodation and overcrowded conditions.”

These are undeniable contributing and complicating factors. 

Our population is far more mobile than it has ever been, and the running sore of homelessness casts a malign shadow over many aspects of Irish life, child welfare included.

However, we should surely be prioritising the care of the most vulnerable and voiceless members of our society, whether through increased investment in this area generally or the reorganisation of organisations such as Tusla specifically. 

The particular challenges identified by Ms Ward and others will have to be addressed for the foreseeable future, and the State should meet and master those challenges.

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IFI is latest body to be filleted by PAC

On Thursday, Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI) joined the lengthy list of Irish public bodies which have had a bruising afternoon with the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

The IFI’s appearance followed a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, Seamus McCarthy, which featured highlights such as dozens of credit cards given to employees as well as a €230,000 repair bill for an uninsured vehicle owned by the organisation which was involved in an accident.

Labour TD Eoghan Kenny pointed to contradictions in statements made by IFI about the accident and stated that there was “a staff member being absolutely, […] thrown under the bus for this”.

This is the kind of knockabout fun we have come to expect from the PAC, which rarely fails to deliver when it comes to exposing public bodies’ errors. It would be far more enjoyable, however, if it were not for the fact that usually large amounts of taxpayers’ money make up the sums being wasted or misspent.

In this particular case there is another layer of concern, however. At this week’s meeting IFI representatives confirmed that they had no leads “whatsoever” about the cause of the pollution on the Blackwater River in Cork last August, which killed up to 40,000 fish.

This has been described as one of the greatest ecological disasters in the history of the State, yet the organisation charged with responsibility for our inland fisheries has no idea who or what caused it.

The IFI is not alone. It, the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies were criticised locally for waiting seven days to react to the fish kill, while a multi-agency investigation which included county council officials and the gardaí could not find a culprit either.

It is difficult to understand how so many State agencies are unable to find the party responsible for such an enormous catastrophe in a relatively small geographical area. 

We learned a lot about the IFI at this week’s PAC meeting, but little enough to make one hopeful about our inland fisheries.

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'Killeagh' is Spotify's top of the pops

We have reached the time of year when end-of-year lists begin to appear, and it is always interesting to consider the Google list of top searches in Ireland, for instance, as a snapshot of the national mood.

To that end “Storm Éowyn” will no doubt remind readers of the disruption caused in January, when the extratropical cyclone made landfall in Ireland and caused significant damage around the country with gusts that reached 184km/h.

On an allied point, those who were not dyed-in-the-wool Lord of the Rings fans showed their colours in the list of most popular ‘how to’ searches on Google: “How to pronounce Éowyn” was the third most popular search of 2025.

It was also unsurprising to see the presidential election dominate online searches: there were more searches on Google for Catherine Connolly, the successful candidate, than for any other person on Google in Ireland this year, and her name was also the third-most searched overall term.

For readers more interested in music, it is also Spotify Wrapped season, when the streaming service releases data about users’ listening habits.

In 2025, the most-streamed artist in Ireland was Taylor Swift for the third year running, but it was an Irish song which proved the most popular of the year.

If you know the words ‘From the woods of Glenbower...’ then you know the one we mean.