Children in Care
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-28
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Ruairí Ó Murchú (SF), Louth

I thank the Minister for being here. We dealt with this to some degree last week but, as Deputy Kerrane has said, it is utterly shocking and harrowing. There are no terms to describe the story of Max, which we all saw on "RTÉ Investigates". We are talking about special emergency arrangements or accommodations that are not in any way suitable. He was missing for two and a half hours before anybody noticed and before the child was abused, and this is only part of it.
Unfortunately, this is a representation of many children who are in these inappropriate settings. It is all we can call them. They are inappropriate settings for which we are paying huge money. We heard it was €2,000 per child per week. This is utterly frightening. I raised this with the Minister last week and she told me that last year there were 170 special emergency accommodations and now there are 70. She said she is talking about reducing the number by 50%. We need to see special emergency accommodation gone. My fear is that the pressure is on, rightly, following "RTÉ Investigates" and the shock that everybody got. We also understand the complexity of the issues, the lack of addiction services and the lack of mental health services and early interventions for families.
We are still talking about Tusla, which is dealing with these issues, probably a lot later because of the size of the caseloads. It is dealing with them a lot later when the issues have become a lot more complex. While we would prefer to see special care facilities funded, if special emergency accommodation is not being utilised, what is happening with the kids who have to be presenting at this time? My fear is that even if we are avoiding using special emergency accommodation, which we should long term, we are talking about inappropriate care, inappropriate supports and inappropriate accommodation.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-04-28/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:52+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-28