The Eastern Regional Health Authority has admitted that the way it deals with young homeless people is unsatisfactory. It was commenting through its chief executive on the case of the 16-year-old rape and torture victim who was homeless for months with the knowledge of the childcare services.
"This authority cannot be satisfied with the current arrangements for dealing with the young homeless or indeed with some other aspects of childcare provision in this region," Mr Donal O'Shea said in a statement to an ERHA meeting last night.
"One of the reasons why the authority was set up in the first place was to procure higher standards across the region for families and children."
Meanwhile, the Minister of State for Children, Ms Mary Hanafin, said her assertion on Monday that the girl's siblings were in care and that the arrangements made for them were working out very well was based on information supplied to her by the Northern Area Health Board. It emerged yesterday that the girl's 18-year-old brother was also homeless.
The Labour Party's spokeswoman on equality and law reform has called for a special meeting of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children to deal with the case. Ms Jan O'Sullivan TD said the Minister of State for Children and the ERHA should be invited to attend at the committee to discuss the issue.
The ISPCC said the situation "once again highlights the reality that the present system is clearly not addressing even the basic needs of such vulnerable children."
Referring to the girl and her brother, Mr O'Shea said last night that arrangements have been made for their accommodation and that "dedicated staff are providing priority services for them."
The ERHA and three "area" health boards (the East Coast, Northern and South Western) replaced the Eastern Health Board in March.
Mr O'Shea said the authority would insist that childcare agencies "will deliver a set of services which will meet the needs of homeless children regardless of their difficult or challenging behaviour or of their emotional or social problems."
But he rejected Father Peter McVerry's call for an independent body to implement the proposals of the Forum on Youth Homelessness. The authority, he said, "is the appropriate body to ensure that the recommendations of the forum are implemented."
He promised the provision, by the end of the year, of "an additional 36 places and an increased range of preventive, treatment and aftercare services for children and young people who find themselves out of home in an emergency." A substantial proportion of these places will cater for young people with behavioural or drug-related problems.
The Minister for Health and Children is to meet the authority to discuss the operation of the childcare system, a spokesman said yesterday.