A State agency should check all the emergency accommodation centres on Gardiner Street, Dublin 1, to ensure the children living there are attending school, a local principal has suggested.
Niamh Murray, principal of the national school on Rutland Street, Dublin 1, mentioned the case of the child in Donabate, Co Dublin, who is missing and presumed dead, and the case of Kyran Durnin, from Drogheda, Co Louth, whom gardaí believe may have died two years before he was reported missing last year, when she spoke at an event in Dublin organised by the Children’s Rights Alliance.
“All of us are very upset by the case of the missing child in Donabate but many of us working on the front line are not surprised because we can see all the gaps in the whole system and how this could happen,” she said.
She said she had recently enrolled a new student in her school who it was obvious had not been attending school even though they should have about three years’ schooling at this stage.
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She had managed to make contact with the school principal the child had earlier attended elsewhere in Dublin and was told by that teacher that the school had thought the child’s family had moved to Co Kildare.
“There are a huge number of children living on Gardiner Street in accommodation centres,” she said, many from vulnerable communities.
“I really think someone needs to go into every single homeless accommodation centre and make sure that the children in those centres are registered for and attending school,” she said.
The chief executive of Tusla, Kate Duggan, in response, said work was being done on how Tusla could access and make use of the school attendance database maintained by the Department of Education.
In terms of children from homeless families not attending school, “it is something we are hearing from colleagues who work with homeless children or who are in homeless hubs,” she said. “It is a high-risk area.”
The meeting heard numerous calls that Tusla should be allocated an extra €200 million in the forthcoming budget, on top of the €1.2 billion it received this year.
“Money matters,” said Maria Corbett, of the Children’s Rights Alliance. “If you invest you can decrease children’s likelihood of exposure to harm.”
Ms Duggan said the child and family service faced huge challenges but it was important to remember that it was not the case that everything was going in the wrong direction.
“I see improvement, I see huge opportunity, I see change happening,” she said. “We can’t lose faith.”
Tusla expects to receive more than 105,000 referrals this year, representing about 10 per cent of all the children in Ireland.
Ms Duggan cited increased investment and improved supports; an initiative next year for a national single point of entry for accessing family support services; greater inter-agency co-operation; a recent increase in the number of people approaching Tusla about working as foster carers; and a growing social worker apprenticeship programme put in place by the agency.
