Missing 8yr Old Kyran Durnin - presumed dead *READ Mod Note Added to OP*

All public services are the same, poor performance and poor value for money, eg National Childrens Hospital, bike shed, and loads more.

Just a couple examples of poor management there.

Answer me this and I'll concede the point.

If this is the first time Tusla have been in contact with a family about a child, where would the photo on the file come from?

That automatic contact would end on the mother's 18th birthday.

So at best, you'd have a picture of a two-year old child in the file of a child who is now eight. What value is that?

Question remains: where would the photo have come from?

And the child hadn't been at school for two years, on what planet could you invite their teacher from two years prior to a Tusla meeting? It's not Earth, anyway.

Apparently not according to csirl above. Apparently Tusla and their NI equivalent have a sharing agreement.

The automatic contact only ends at 18 if everything is going well, otherwise it continues.

My guess in this case is that the SW team assigned the case wasnt meeting the family regularly as intended. That they were making the odd phone call and reporting up the line that everything was fine. Note that in the SW profession, the importance of face to face contact is heavily emphasised.

The schools all have electronic attendance systems. At the end of each term report is generated and electronically sent to Tusla. Report gives the non-attendance dates and any recorded absence reasons for every child in the school who missed more than 20 school days. Report goes to the local Tusla education support services officer (TESS part of Tusla) (would be called the "Truant Officer" in the old days). This Officer is obliged to contact the families to check if there are any issues.

Note that individual kids sre not reported individually - its every kid in one single report.

Of course the Tusla officer has loads of free time on his/her hands so will have no difficulty whatsoever in following up every child on that list. Because they'll have every child's address or addresses (if the parents are separated) so just need to toddle up to the last known address, knock on the door, have a chat with the parent (who may or may not be able to speak English) and everything will be oxo. And, if by some chance the family has moved on, then the Tusla worker simply gives the local Garda station a shout and an underworked garda will immediately give Interpol a call and everything will be sorted striaght away. An absolute doddle.

Why not also have a DNA profile on file to ensure the childs DNA profile actually matches with whoever is claiming to be the birth mother and father? Surely that MIGHT save a child's life at some point?

Taking photos of children and putting them on files etc is fraught with issues, not least of course that a kids looks change by the year or month in some cases. How regularly do you update the photos? How do you verify the person presented for photos in the first instance is who they are being presented as?

I see a lot of daft suggestions here with the logic being 'if it saves one child from getting murdered isn't it worth it?'

Which of course pulls at the heart strings but doesn't really stand up to any critical analysis.

Why doesnt Tusla newborns off underage mothers on every case and foster them out? It would have saved this child's life but is it practical, ethical or legal??

There are levels of things you can do to protect kids however as many have already stated if you are up against individuals with malice intent there very often aren't that many things that you could have done from a practical perspective.

To be clear I amn't saying Tusla/The school acted as well as they could, you would hope the details will come out, but to expect some of the safeguards that have been discussed here to have been implemented or followed simply isn't realistic.

You do realise that, especially since the GFA - but even to some extent well before that - there is significant cooperation between all sorts of bodies with their cross-border equivalent, right?

Some posters on here seem to think it's like the border between North and South Korea, or the Berlin Wall FFS.

There are other issues with photos, not just GDPR related.

No, thats not what Im saying. All underage births are automatic Mandated Reports to Tusla. Tusla monitors until they turn 18. If the SW team sign off that everything is ok, they are no longer monitored. If not, they continue to be monitored until such time (if ever) things are ok.

BTW, Im not expressing an opinion. Im saying what currently happens.

I was joking about GDPR. The issue isn't photos anyway: even assuming that was genuinely an insurmountable obstacle to identifying with certainty a child feared to be at risk, then other methods of identification would be required - and could be found. The idea that Tusla would just have to take the potentially abusive parents' word for it is laughable.

Many of the safeguards discussed here are already in place though, this isn’t cuckoo land stuff.

And yes, Tusla do meet with families where a child has been absent over 20 days, I’ve witnessed that happening.

a school in NI might be ‘state funded’… or ‘grant aided’ but it’s not a state body.

Your last sentence bears no relevance to this discussion…. Literally nobody thinks that. Sorry.