Rundale

School Dormitory, Baltimore, Cork. Source: National Archives

Tara Ćirić

In 1991 the Streetwise National Coalition came together to develop a report on the inadequacy of existing services for homeless children and children in need of alternative residential services. More than three decades later, an RTE Investigates broadcast has highlighted how homelessness and inadequacy of services continue to plague our child welfare service.

In that time, almost every Minister for Children has spoken publicly about the need for change. Norma Foley has spoken about reform, particularly concerning placement stability. Before her, Roderic O’Gorman called for the need to increase workforce capacity in the face of rising demand. Katherine Zappone espoused the virtues of listening to children and young people in care in the wake of Catherine Corless’ reporting on 796 deaths of children at Tuam Mother and Baby Institution. James Reilly promised to respond to vulnerabilities identified within the system. Frances Fitzgerald did the same following reports of systemic failures. Barry Andrews called for increased investment, reform and improving outcomes specifically in group care settings. Even Brian Lenihan, the first Minister for Children, talked about building a system capable of responding to the need to protect children.

Before the Health Boards began developing Ireland’s first publicly run child welfare service in the 1970s, the Catholic Church held total dominion. Between the nineteenth and mid-twentieth century, one in every one hundred people in Ireland was coercively confined in Ireland’s ‘architecture of containment’.  This included Reformatory Schools, Industrial Schools, Special Needs Schools, Training Centres, County Homes and Magdalene Laundries, all of which functioned as Ireland’s child welfare service, the majority of which were facilitated (legally, administratively and sometimes financially) by the State but run by Religious Orders. Though orphanages, unofficial kinship care and private adoptions were available to some upper- and middle-class families, these were in the minority. In Industrial and Reformatory Schools alone, over 105,000 children in Ireland were committed by the courts between 1868 and 1969.

Starting in the 1970s, following a series of less–than–perfect reports commissioned by the government concerning the systemic abuse and mistreatment of children within these institutions, the government began a slow, painful process of transition to a public, fully State-run child welfare service (though the last of these institutions would not close until well into the 1990s and some of their elderly inmates remain). Sites for residential care homes, group homes and secure units were purchased by the State and staffed by social care workers employed by the State. The transition began with the Health Boards in the 1970s but it wasn’t until the Child Care Act of 1991 was passed that the State-run service was formalised into law.

The Establishment of Tusla

When the Tusla Child and Family Agency was established on 1st January 2014, it was given the full responsibility of child welfare service, transferred from the Health Boards. At the same time, the government announced their vision for Ireland “to be one of the best small countries in the world in which to grow up”. In 2014, 21,000 child welfare referrals and 19,000 child abuse referrals were sent to Tusla.

By 2024, Tusla reported 96,666 referrals, the highest on record, and admitted they were “unable to respond” to their own standards of service for children in care. Tusla’s Corporate Plans in 2018, 2021 and 2024, as well as the Department of Children’s Strategic Goals in 2021 and 2025 have cited various concerns in developing “consistent high-quality service”. These concerns can be understood as being informed and exacerbated by two significant shortfalls: not enough staff and not enough homes.

So, how did we get here? Or rather, how are we still here? The answer lies in the well-known death knell for child welfare services across the Global North: a cycle of underinvestment leading to privatisation.

Crisis in Care, Crisis in Housing

Children in care can be placed in one of three ‘out-of-home’ placement types within the system: foster care, residential care and secure units. Foster care numbers remain high in Ireland, but have steadily decreased as availability of foster carers reduce due to rising cost-of-living, housing availability and a rise in traditional caregivers (read: women) working outside of the home. Residential and secure care homes are group settings typically reserved for children with higher social, emotional or medical needs than a foster family could support. However, a rising number of children are landing in these placement types due to the decline in available foster families.

A lack of placement stability is one of the most cited risk factors for children in State Care. Placement stability is a very academic, very un-human term for the very real experience of 54% of children in care in Ireland: moving from one place to another, often with very little notice and little to no say in the matter. Children can be moved from county to county, away from their siblings, away from their culture, their school and everything and everyone they know in an afternoon. In other words, it’s housing insecurity. And, as discussed at the top of this article, housing insecurity was a point of contention within the system well before Tusla was established. And it has only gotten worse since then.

What has caused this housing insecurity mirrors that of child welfare systems in Canada, the United States, England, Wales and Scotland. It goes like this: the State pulls back its funding for publicly run care homes, often due to austerity measures. Placements close down or reduce capacity. Staff leave or are cut. In 2005, the Irish government maintained 93 publicly run specialist beds in secure care and 86 residential care units for children with high support needs in State Care. However, in the midst of rising referrals to child welfare services, these beds were gradually closed, with the last Secure Unit closing in 2014 and residential care being reduced by half, and no publicly available rationale published by the government.  

As these secure and residential care units closed, private companies rushed in to fill the gaps the State had created. But this time, for profit.  Children who previously would be housed in State-run residential homes or secure units are now being largely housed in Special Emergency Accommodations (SEAs) such as hotel rooms, B&Bs and hostels or private residential homes run by private owners paid for by the State. Children’s outcomes worsen. Corners are cut to increase profit, including forging vetting documents for staff. The whistle continues to blow, calling out ‘barbaric’ conditions. Unregistered care homes continue to house children.

Tusla knows that privatisation leads to worse outcomes for children in care. Reduced reliance on privatisation has been one of the strategic goals since at least 2018, and was added as a measure of success in 2026. It has also been a repeated point of contention for Irish child advocacy groups such as Child’s Rights Alliance, Empowering People in Care, and the Child Law Project, as well as researchers within the field, for decades. The Ombudsman for Children recently reported that “the care system in Ireland is broken for many children. As it stands it is not operating in the best interests of children, and it is our experience that the care system is where the most profound breaches of all children’s rights are found”.  And yet, here we are halfway through the year and there has been an increase in reliance on private residential care.

The Cost of Crisis

Between 2016 and 2019, private residential care ate up 94% of all residential care cost increases. Now, in 2026, almost three quarters of children in residential care are living in privately run facilities and 1,121 children are placed in unregulated SEAs, often with dire consequences including sexual exploitation and mistreatment within these privatised settings. All to the tune of around €300 million of taxpayer money.

This cycle of State underinvestment to privatisation mirrors that of other housing crises within Ireland. The government has increasingly turned to private businesses, paying almost €1 billion to private companies in 2024 to house yet another extremely vulnerable population that the State is legally required to care for and protect. The same is found in emergency family accommodation, which costs €180,000 per family, going directly to private businesses such as hotels.

In our child welfare service, this money could instead be used to fund a robust, publicly run care system without the additional overhead of profit. This includes opening additional residential care and secure care units, investing in long-term staffing strategies from education to hiring schemes, and maintaining and increasing foster care placements through increased stipends and pensions to long-term carers. All these recommendations are evidence-based strategies with long term positive outcomes, but none of them are possible while the State wastes €300 million each year on a privatisation process that only leads to worse outcomes for children.

It’s well past time for the Irish government to act on decades of recommendations and reverse course on the for-profit industry of child welfare that is threatening the safety and stability of the most vulnerable children in our society. We need to prohibit for-profit child welfare services and revert funding back to a robust, durable public service. Yes, this will mean significant investment. But the money is already being spent, just in the wrong place. And if the legislative responsibility Tusla has is for ‘the best interest of the child’, there is no alternative.