Call for urgent child protection funding at Killarney conference

Frontline child protection and welfare services are facing an unprecedented crisis due to a surge in cases and limited resources, key speakers warned at a national conference in Killarney on Wednesday.

The final event of National End Child Poverty Week took place at the KCYS Youth Centre in Killarney, bringing together child welfare experts, legal professionals, and social workers to examine child protection, welfare, and alternative care.
Addressing delegates ahead of Budget 2027, Tanya Ward, Chief Executive of the Children’s Rights Alliance, warned against proposed spending cuts across government departments that deliver core family supports.
"For politicians to speak about their prioritisation of the protection and safety of children in recent weeks, while at the same time committing to levying the Departments that deliver those protection, welfare and family support services is just not right," Tanya Ward said. "The levies, which are intended to shoulder an ‘overspend’ by the department of education through cuts across other departments, could not come at a worse time. They essentially ask critical services to children to pare back, to do more with less – at a time when these services are completely stretched thin trying to meet the demand for support."
Figures released at the conference revealed that referrals to Tusla, the Child and Family Agency, have doubled over the past decade. The agency received a record 106,444 referrals in 2025. That upward trend has continued into 2026, with 28,800 referrals logged in the first three months of the year—an 11 per cent increase compared to the same period in 2025.
"Tusla and its support services are the last safety net for vulnerable children and families," Tanya Ward added. "We need to be seeing significant increased investment to ensure we have a child protection system that is fit for purpose and can meet the needs of the children behind these figures who are facing battles such as neglect, emotional, physical or sexual abuse, trauma and deprivation."
Chaired by Julie Ahern, Director of Legal, Policy and Services at the Children’s Rights Alliance, the conference featured keynote contributions from Kate Duggan, Chief Executive Officer of Tusla, and Dr Aisling Parkes, Special Rapporteur on Child Protection and Senior Lecturer in Law at UCC.
Additional speakers included Denise Kirwan, Partner at Comyn Kelleher Tobin Solicitors; social worker Thomas O’Driscoll; Seamus Whitty, CEO of KCYS; and Sinéad Roe, Intensive Family Support Co-ordinator at KCYS.
The Children’s Rights Alliance is calling on the Government to deliver a dedicated "Children’s Budget" for 2027. Key demands include increasing Tusla’s overall funding to expand social work staff across 30 new network areas, funding the rollout of the forthcoming National Policy Framework on Alternative Care, and increasing the proportion of Tusla's budget directed to early intervention and community family support by three percentage points annually over five years.