Concern has been mounting for some time about the safety and welfare of child asylum seekers in Tusla’s care.
The worries, voiced by health watchdog Hiqa, legal professionals, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and Tusla itself, centre on these vulnerable young people ending up in homes where adults have also been incorrectly placed.
The latest revelation – that between 2022 and 2025, almost 300 asylum seekers claiming they were children were subsequently found to be adults – will heighten concerns.
In its April 27th letter to the PAC, Tusla describes the “significant risk” it faces in having to decide whether a young asylum seeker is eligible for its services.
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“There is no provision in law for Tusla to conduct age assessments,” it says.
Under sections 13 and 14 of the International Protection Act, 2015, when an immigration official believes someone applying for asylum is under the age of 18 and alone, they “shall” refer them to Tusla “as soon as practicable”.
Then “it shall be presumed that the person concerned is a child” and legislation “relating to the care and welfare [of children] shall apply”.
This puts Tusla in almost impossible position of being the agency that must in effect conduct age assessments, while having no legislative basis to, and having to accommodate a person in their services while they are being assessed.
In the absence of legislation to allow it to conduct age assessments, Tusla calls its process an “intake eligibility assessment”. This “is in the form of an interview”.
It is challenging “to rebut the claim of being a minor”, says Tusla, especially when adhering to “best practice guidance of fair procedures, benefit of the doubt and the legal premise of presumption of minority”.
In the past a dental examination, including dental X-rays, were used to verify a person’s age. Ethical concerns about X-rays without any health benefit and the invasive nature of dental exams means these are no longer used.
The issue is complex. Children’s rights to be protected from harm are at stake. And Tusla is caught in its midst without clear legislative guidance.
The risks associated with mistakenly placing an adult in Tusla children’s accommodation are obvious. But there are serious risks for any child wrongly deemed to be an adult and placed in adult-only Ipas accommodation.
Being incorrectly deemed an adult will likely also result in a child being denied the right to go to school.
The urgency with which Tusla views the risk to children in its care when it believes an adult is living among them was laid bare in Dublin District Court last month, when an age inquiry into one disputed case had to be adjourned.
The male asylum seeker in that case remains in a facility for children, despite Tusla believing him to be an adult.
Describing the agency’s application for the age inquiry as “really urgent”, counsel for Tusla told Judge Vincent Deane the teenager was “placed in a children’s facility in circumstances where the agency has deemed him ineligible for services”.
In contrast, in a 2023 briefing for the Oireachtas committee on children, medical charity Safetynet cited several cases where child asylum seekers were not believed and were wrongly placed in adult Ipas centres, where they were “extremely vulnerable and unprotected”.
Tusla received 768 referrals to its Separated Children Seeking International Protection service last year. There were about 1,200 unaccompanied minors in care or accommodated by the agency in 2025.
It has seen a fall in the number of unaccompanied young asylum seekers being referred to the first three months of 2026, compared with the last three months of 2025, from 196 to 97.
Tusla says this coincides with a new “age screening” process at entry points in preparation for implementation of the EU Migration Pact in June.
The Irish Times has asked the Department of Justice for details on what the screening process entails.
