Concerns have emerged after Tusla “inadvertently" placed two children in the care of a company it had previously "blacklisted”.

The Irish Times reports that State child and family agency stopped working with the company after it emerged that staff were working with children without completing Garda vetting and child protection training.

Tusla was using the company Supervised Access Ireland to oversee supervised visits between children in State care and parents.

'Concerns'

On The Pat Kenny Show, Irish Times journalist Jack Power explained how the issue came to light.

"Concerns were first raised inside this company in late 2023," Mr Power said.

"According to internal emails that the Irish Times has seen, some staff were trying to blow the whistle - saying they were aware of colleagues who had told them they hadn’t been properly Garda-vetted yet and they hadn’t completed things like child protection training.

"At the same time, they were on visits where they were supervising the access visits.

"There are situations where [Supervised Access Ireland staff are] alone with the children in the car so it does raise obvious child protection concerns."

'Blacklisting'

Mr Power said Tusla cut ties with the company after the concerns were first raised last February.

It has now emerged, however, that Tusla "inadvertently" placed two siblings in State care with the company after it was blacklisted.

"That in itself kicked off a further round of internal concern within Tusla," Mr Power said. “That a company they themselves had blacklisted over what they felt were shortcomings in the Garda vetting of staff, that they would use them again.

"Tusla then had to provide assurances to the Department of Children that they were absolutely no longer using this company and they had no plans to use this company in the future."

Mr Power said he has not seen any evidence that any harm has come to children as a result of Tusla using the company.

"There's nothing that we found either from speaking to former employees or going through documents we got under the Freedom of Information Act [that suggests] that there were any incidents as a result of this," he said.

The issue, Mr Power said, highlights "more of a governance issue and failing over the approach to safe-guarding and child protection."

Response

According to The Irish Times, Tusla "could not comment on issues around vetting in Supervised Access Ireland, other than to confirm it had stopped using the service".

The Irish Times also contacted Supervised Access Ireland for comment.

Newstalk has contacted Tesla and Supervised Access Ireland for comment.

Feature image shows a child looking out a window, Alamy