Do we really need a senior minister for children ?

Tapes

Seems a bit crazy to have an new senior minister post dealing only with children.

mikemac

For a number of years now there have been plans to hold what the media call the Children's Referendum

I don't realy know a whole lot about it myself.

There is an official link here,
http://www.omc.gov.ie/viewdoc.asp?fn=%2Fdocuments%2Flegislation%2FconstRef.htm

I'd imagine once the referendum is over, they'll look again at at this Ministers portfolio.

max 73

To be honest I don't know why we have any ministers as none of them take any responsibility for anything anyway

View

Tapes wrote: »

Seems a bit crazy to have an new senior minister post dealing only with children.

Why stop at just children?

Switzerland - with twice our population - has 7 Ministers and manages just fine. As to how they do it - they take "everything else" and give it to their 26 cantons to figure out how to do them. And their system works pretty well.

We, on the other hand, have twice as many Ministers and centralise everything we can so the Ministers will have something to do. This means we are dependent on our Ministers getting the decisions right for us as we can't make (meaningful) decisions locally because our local government is largely powerless. Unsurprisingly, our system doesn't work particularly well...

Mr. Presentable

Of course not, but jobs for the lads! Won't somebody please think of the lads!!!

zig

max 73 wrote: »

To be honest I don't know why we have any ministers as none of them take any responsibility for anything anyway

This is quite true, the only minister that seems to be remotely held accountable is the finance minister, and what I mean by held accountable is that they simply have to deal with more grief in the dail, not accountable as in thrown in jail.

Anywhoodle

Tapes wrote: »

Seems a bit crazy to have an new senior minister post dealing only with children.

Mr. Presentable wrote: »

Of course not, but jobs for the lads! Won't somebody please think of the lads!!!

Devoting a full Dept. to children is actually a v. necessary step in light of the staggering depth of problems facing our child care system. Both this system and child law generally are in dire need of a major overhaul. For decades, we've been going from scandal to scandal, each one more horrendous than the last and every dust-gathering report (be it the Kilkenny Incest Report, the Report on the McColgan case, the Kelly Fitzgerald case, the Roscommon Incest case, etc. etc. etc.) has highlighted the exact same problems and need for reform. Without a constitutional referendum, childrens' rights will continue to be secondary to the rights of the parents/marital family unit. No matter how badly a child needs to be taken into care, abusive or neglectful parents can stave off State intervention by arguing that they're a constitutionally-protected marital family and that there is a presumption that the interests of the child are best-served within the natural family (a claim that certainly worked for the Roscommon parents).

This fundamental legal problem is compounded by the fact that the HSE operate on a Mon-Fri, 9-5 basis. Out of hours, children whose safety and welfare is at risk can only be protected by Gardai acting under emergency powers (s.12 of the Child Care Act 1991). So, an at-risk child may have to stay within the inappropriate environment of a police station until the HSE are back on-duty. I'm not going to even get into the issue of kids who have gone missing, died etc. while in HSE care. Already, the new Dept. is talking about setting up a new agency to take child-care issues away from the HSE which is long overdue. They've enough on their plate with the health system (mucking that up undoubtedly takes a huge amount of energy). Child care should ideally be dealt with by a more specialised, focused body. Great start. Hopefully, a referendum will be on the horizon too..

Seth Brundle

Anywhoodle wrote: »

Devoting a full Dept. to children is actually a v. necessary step in light of the staggering depth of problems facing our child care system. Both this system and child law generally are in dire need of a major overhaul. For decades, we've been going from scandal to scandal, each one more horrendous than the last and every dust-gathering report (be it the Kilkenny Incest Report, the Report on the McColgan case, the Kelly Fitzgerald case, the Roscommon Incest case, etc. etc. etc.) has highlighted the exact same problems and need for reform. Without a constitutional referendum, childrens' rights will continue to be secondary to the rights of the parents/marital family unit. No matter how badly a child needs to be taken into care, abusive or neglectful parents can stave off State intervention by arguing that they're a constitutionally-protected marital family and that there is a presumption that the interests of the child are best-served within the natural family (a claim that certainly worked for the Roscommon parents).

This fundamental legal problem is compounded by the fact that the HSE operate on a Mon-Fri, 9-5 basis. Out of hours, children whose safety and welfare is at risk can only be protected by Gardai acting under emergency powers (s.12 of the Child Care Act 1991). So, an at-risk child may have to stay within the inappropriate environment of a police station until the HSE are back on-duty. I'm not going to even get into the issue of kids who have gone missing, died etc. while in HSE care. Already, the new Dept. is talking about setting up a new agency to take child-care issues away from the HSE which is long overdue. They've enough on their plate with the health system (mucking that up undoubtedly takes a huge amount of energy). Child care should ideally be dealt with by a more specialised, focused body. Great start. Hopefully, a referendum will be on the horizon too..

Whilst I accept that, the Dept of children is part of the dept of health as is the HSE (kind of).
I can't see anything productive coming from this dept tbh.
Does anyone know how many staff are working for it and what exactly do they do?