THE MINISTER for Justice, Brian Lenihan, will look again at how the issue of separated children is treated in the Immigration Bill and bring forward amendments, he told the Oireachtas Committee on Justice yesterday.
The Bill was up for discussion before the committee, where 706 amendments were tabled.
Pat Rabbitte, Labour's spokesman on justice, proposed an amendment defining a separated child as one outside his or her state, or country of habitual residence, and separated from both parents or previous legal care-givers. He said this was an internationally-accepted definition, rather than the term "unaccompanied minor" favoured by the proposed legislation.
Referring to the problem of trafficking, he said about half of those trafficked globally were children.
"Some of those were trafficked for exploitation in the sex industry and some children have been found in brothels in Ireland."
Denis Naughten, Fine Gael spokesman on immigration and integration, said a fundamental weakness of the Bill was the lack of a definition of a separated child. It also did not refer to children from within the EU who could be victims of trafficking.
He was also proposing amendments to identify those who were under 18, to establish their age and to give a child the benefit of the doubt relating to age.
He said it was not in the best interests of separated children to hand them over to the HSE. The HSE had problems dealing with the needs of Irish children, and recent days had again seen the problem of the lack of an out-of-hours service.
Non-Irish children were not treated in the same way as Irish-born children by the HSE. A number went missing from its care and were never found. Five Nigerian girls had gone missing last year, and had still not been found. There was concern they had been trafficked into the sex industry.
He was proposing an amendment to take responsibility for such children away from the HSE and give it to a special section of the Department of Justice. There was an onus on the Minister and the department to protect these children with a separate service.
Mr Lenihan said "unaccompanied minor" was a better term because it focused on the fact that the child was unaccompanied, and it was clearer for an immigration officer to understand and deal with. This was the term used in the EU directive on the matter.
He said the proposal to establish a new section in his department, which would be a branch of the social services, was unacceptable. The HSE had statutory responsibility for children at risk, of which these children were a sub-set. Not all unaccompanied minors were necessarily at risk. In relation to trafficked children within the EU, citizens of the EU did have freedom of movement.
Following further discussion on the problems of the HSE with regard to unaccompanied minors from other countries, he told the committee he would take up the matter with the HSE.