Concern has been expressed at the number of unaccompanied children seeking asylum that have gone missing in the State.
Health Service Executive figures showed 501 unaccompanied minors went missing from State care between 2000 and 2009. Only 67 of them, some 13 per cent, have been successfully traced.
The figures indicated the number of children who went missing last year was more than twice that who went missing the previous year.
Expressing her concern at the figures, psychologist and Fianna Fáil Senator Maria Corrigan said: “We need to ensure that Ireland sends out a strong message in child protection terms that this country is no safe haven for illegal trafficking.”
”I am aware, especially in the case of unaccompanied foreign national minors, of anecdotal accounts of some children who, upon arrival to the State, enter the care of the HSE but go missing because they try to join up with their families who are already in the State.”
“However, I am also aware there is concern that some of these children may be intentionally trafficked to Ireland,” she said.
Labour Senator Ivana Bacik said the figures were of “grave concern”, and showed the need for greatly increased levels of co-operation between the HSE and the gardaí.
“The real worry is that these children are very vulnerable to being exploited or trafficked, once the State is unable to locate them,” she said.
“We have a duty of care to these children, and it is unacceptable that so many have gone missing over the past decade,” she added.
The HSE figures showed the number of missing minors had fallen since the 2000-2006 period, when an average of 51 minors who were never traced went missing each year.
A spokeswoman for the HSE said every case of a minor going missing in State care was treated “extremely seriously”.