Tusla is facing contempt of court proceedings after it failed to comply with a High Court order to find special care beds for two highly vulnerable children who remain \u201cat large\u201d.<\/p>\n
In the action in their names, the children, through their mothers, are seeking a declaration that Tusla, the Child and Family Agency, is in contempt of the court\u2019s orders. <\/p>\n
Highly troubled and vulnerable children aged 11 to 17 can be detained in a secure care unit, known as special care, on foot of a High Court order.<\/p>\n
Two such orders were made in respect of the children in recent weeks by Mr Justice John Jordan. <\/p>\n
However, neither order has been complied with as there are no beds available at any of the State\u2019s three secure care units. <\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Joe Jeffers SC, for one of the children, told Ms Justice Emily Egan there was a real urgency to the cases and he said the prime purpose of the proceedings was to secure compliance with the orders. <\/p>\n
Mr Jeffers told the High Court these cases differed from similar proceedings against Tusla in that the children involved were at large and the agency had given no indication about when a special care bed might become available for them.<\/p>\n
Opening recent correspondence from his side to Tusla, Mr Jeffers told the court that the minor he represented was \u201cin extreme danger\u201d and facing an \u201cimminent risk to [their] life\u201d. <\/p>\n
The minor was in recent days arrested by garda\u00ed for driving a vehicle that was not theirs and tested positive for cocaine, he said. <\/p>\n
Mr Jeffers proposed hearing the action in modules and sought a date for hearing in December. <\/p>\n
Alan Brady SC, for the other child, said he echoed Mr Jeffer\u2019s comments about the urgency of the cases. <\/p>\n
Se\u00e1n Guerin SC, for Tusla, said the urgency and importance of the children\u2019s cases \u2013 and childcare cases more generally \u2013 was \u201cfully acknowledged\u201d by Tusla. <\/p>\n
Mr Guerin said his client would admit its noncompliance with Mr Justice Jordan\u2019s orders and said this would not be an issue in the proceedings. <\/p>\n
He said Tulsa apologised to the court \u201cunreservedly\u201d for the noncompliance.<\/p>\n
Mr Guerin said the issue in these proceedings was whether a state agency which maintains it has made its best efforts to comply with court orders should be subject to a declaration of contempt. <\/p>\n
It will be Tusla\u2019s case that a declaration should not be made in those circumstances, he said. <\/p>\n
Mr Guerin said the reasons for Tusla\u2019s noncompliance were complex, multifactorial and longstanding. <\/p>\n
He said these issues would have to be addressed in evidence at the hearing of the actions to allow the court to decide whether to make a declaration of contempt. <\/p>\n
Mr Guerin said the mere fact of noncompliance was not a basis for such a declaration.<\/p>\n
Ms Justice Egan said there was an urgent need to see if anything could be achieved before Christmas to bring about an improvement for the two minors. <\/p>\n
In response, Mr Guerin said there was a limited number of places available in special care units. <\/p>\n
He said that while there was a hope that one bed might become available in December, and another in January, this was dependent on the discharge of other children. <\/p>\n
Other parties were represented at the case management hearing on Tuesday, including the HSE and other state organisations. <\/p>\n
Ms Justice Egan said she would list the matter for hearing in December to allow the children\u2019s side to present evidence relevant to the court\u2019s decision on making a declaration of contempt. <\/p>\n
Noting Tusla and the state parties\u2019 submission that a December hearing was not realistic, the judge said that failing to bring the parties back to court before Christmas would amount to a failure to defend and vindicate the constitutional rights of the children. <\/p>\n
The judge said she could not overstate the urgency in finding beds for the children and reducing the great risk they were exposed to by virtue of Tusla\u2019s noncompliance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tusla is facing contempt of court proceedings after it failed to comply with a High Court order to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160333,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,61,60,112,53],"class_list":["post-160332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-high-court","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports","tag-tusla"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}