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Children & Youth Affairs Minister Frances Fitzgerald today announced that the Children First Bill 2014 will be published today.

The legislation will put the Children First:

National Guidance for the Protection and Welfare of Children [2011], which contains key elements of the Children First Guidelines on a

statutory footing for the first time since the Guidelines were first published in 1999.

The Children First Bill 2014 will form part of a suite of child protection

legislation which already includes the Criminal Justice (Withholding of

Information on Offences against Children and Vulnerable Persons) Act 2012

and the National Vetting Bureau (Children and Vulnerable Persons) Act,

2012.

Minister Fitzgerald stated:

This proposed new law represents an important and necessary addition to the child welfare and protection landscape in Ireland, seeking, as it does, to ensure that child protection concerns are brought to the attention of the Child and Family Agency without delay. This legislation is about making best safeguarding practice the cultural norm for anyone working with children.

The Bill provides for a number of key child protection measures, as

follows:

• A requirement on mandated persons to report child protection concerns to the Child and Family Agency (Tusla);
• A requirement on mandated persons to assist the Child and Family Agency in the assessment of a child protection risk, if requested to do so by the Agency;
• A requirement on organisations providing services to children to comply with best practice in child protection as set out in the Children First Guidelines and to produce an organisational-specific Child Safeguarding Statement;
• Statutory arrangements to promote cross-sectoral implementation and compliance with Children First.