A judge has described as “outrageous” and “unbelievable” a 14-year-old in Tusla care going from hotel placement to hotel placement and not knowing the location.
At the Family Law Court on Friday, Judge Adrian Harris said he was “grappling with the question: are we doing more harm having this child in care rather than not in care?”
He said that the teenager was “being put up in different places every night; doesn’t know where ... and is covering half the country”.
Last month, Tusla, the child and family agency, secured an emergency care order for the teenager.
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Initially, the teenager was a social admission by Tusla to a university hospital after the fuel protests prevented gardaí from completing a transfer to a hotel placement in Dublin.
The teenager’s court appointed independent voice, the Guardian ad Litem (Gal), told the court that Tusla was looking for an extension to the interim care order “and yet they can’t place the child in suitable placements and that can’t be allowed to continue”.
Harris described the contents of the Tusla social care worker’s report before the court as “very, very disappointing”.
The Tusla social care worker said that the child in recent days had been accommodated at a location in Co Limerick and hotels in Dublin and Portlaoise.
He said the teenager had engaged in disruptive behaviour that resulted in placements in Co Limerick and Dublin being no longer available.
The GaL said that a special emergency care arrangement, which had been approved, was a marginal improvement on the current situation where the child “doesn’t have to move from one end of the country to the other night after night”.
The judge said the child had been in care for a month and “you wonder as a judge am I doing the right thing at all entrusting [the child] into the care of the State entity that is supposed to be caring for children in such situations”.
“This child is going from one hotel to another hotel late at night ... it is just unbelievable and outrageous stuff on the part of Tusla, absolutely outrageous”.
Tusla solicitor Kevin Sherry admitted that the situation was clearly untenable.
Solicitor for the parents, Mary Cuffe, told the court that at a meeting with Tusla the social care worker suggested to her clients that they take their child back.
“You appreciate that is completely out of the question as on the last occasion [the child] was there [the child] completely destroyed the house which they haven’t been able to repair as they don’t have the funds to do so,” Cuffe said.
