Ombudsman for Children highlights key budgetary changes that would transform children’s services and supports in Ireland

The Ombudsman for Children, Dr Niall Muldoon has written to the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform urging them to ensure children are prioritised in a meaningful way in the upcoming budgetary process.

The Ombudsman for Children highlighted key budgetary changes that would transform children’s services and supports in Ireland, and which would ensure children’s rights are central to decision making.

In his letters Niall said:

“I have serious concerns about how a lack of multi-annual funding is hampering the delivery and planning of key services for children especially in the areas of disability and mental health. In the absence of any medium or longer term funding strategies for children, the provision of services is ad-hoc, leading to adverse effects on children and their families. This is most recently evidenced in our report, A Plan for Places, Two Years On, about the provision and planning of special education places and supports in schools.

“It is also clear that Government is not allocating sufficient resources to prevention and early intervention measures. It is not acceptable that we continue to allocate significant resources to plug gaps in the system in a short term way, allowing issues to get worse and storing up problems for further down the line, leading to a much greater human, and economic, costs.

“My office sees how the increasing use of public funds in the private provision of services is leading to poor outcomes for children and not in keeping with the basic principles of children’s rights. This is especially the case for the provision of special care arrangements for children and young people in care, and the private provision of emergency and asylum seeker accommodation.

“Recurring issues affecting children are compounded by a lack of transparency in budget allocations, making it difficult to track long term investment in children. They also hamper the State’s capacity to measure the adequacy, appropriateness, and effectiveness of expenditure. Departments are forced to work in silos as the budgetary process and budgetary assessments are not designed with children’s rights in mind.

“Steps have still not been taken to expand the existing framework of social impact assessment to include a child rights impact assessment, which would ensure that fiscal and budgetary decisions are compliant with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, as recommended by the Committee in 2016.”

The OCO specifically called for;

1. The introduction of multi-annual funding for children’s services.
2. An evidence based approach to close the gaps and improve outcomes for the most vulnerable and marginalised children.
3. The introduction of specific budget lines for children with ring-fenced funding. This should include a ring-fenced budget for children’s mental health services and a specific allocation for health services for children with disabilities.
4. The effective resourcing of the Child Poverty and Well-Being Programme Office to carry out child friendly budget proofing and tracking in line with the Young Ireland commitments.
5. The roll out of child rights impact assessments to ensure that fiscal and budgetary decisions are compliant with obligations under the UNCRC.

“I know that all of this cannot be actioned in one Budget. However, as Ombudsman for Children it is my duty to point out where children’s rights have been compromised and until a more child centred approach to budgeting is adopted we will continue to see the same issues affecting children time and time again. There are multiple factors that contribute to the failures children are experiencing, but insufficient resources and the processes underpinning the allocation of those resources are among the most significant.”

• 18 September 2024
• Type: Press Release
• Topic: Disability, Mental Health