The Chief Executive of the Children's Rights Alliance has said a team has been established to conduct welfare checks on over 23,000 cases referred to Tusla to "ensure that another Daniel Aruebose or Kyran Durnin case" does not occur again.
It comes after the Tusla Wellbeing Project was established last September to review the welfare of children whose protection cases were closed during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The project is independently chaired by Children’s Rights Alliance Chief Executive Tanya Ward.
A total of 76,546 children had referrals closed between 1 March 2020 and 28 February 2022.
Approximately 42,000 cases had no new referrals or ongoing engagement with Tusla since the lockdown period.
Given there is no legal basis for Tusla to conduct a wellbeing check on a young person over the age of 18, around 18,000 cases are outside the scope of the project.
Data points from over 23,000 cases will be shared with the Department of Education and Youth to allow them to check these children against school enrolment data.
Following this process, the Department of Children says, if the child is not known to the school system, further checks will be carried out as required, and will assist Tusla in identifying the whereabouts of these children.
Speaking on RTÉ’s News At One, Ms Ward said a lot of the information Tusla had gathered on these cases was out of date, due to GDPR, meaning PPSN numbers for some children were not there.
"In fact, some families might have moved up to five times in the intervening period," she said, adding that work had to be done to identify them.
She said with regards to GDPR, a data minimisation approach is taken, gathering only the information that is needed.
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She said one of the recommendations as a steering group will be to look at what information Tusla has been able to gather.
"We are doing something new and innovative. But I do think it is going to be very important going forward that we actually have robust systems in place where follow up work can be done for children," she said.
On the more than 23,000 cases, she said Tusla will work with other agencies to gather information on the children, with a team reviewing every one of those cases.
"They are trying to establish now, are those children registered in education, registered in early years' service, are they making connections with the Department of Social Protection and they will be trying to establish if they are in the presence of a mandated reporter," she said.
She said under children first legislation, people who work with children are required to bring to Tusla a child protection and welfare concern if there is one.
Ms Ward said the team will remind the reporters to refer any child they are concerned about to Tusla, while the reporters will all be written to over the concerns made.
"The team will be able to pinpoint if there is a Daniel (Aruebose) or Kyran (Durnin) case and a senior social worker will then do follow up work on those cases," she said.
Ms Ward said the steering group will make a specific recommendation to Government about children who turn 18 and who as a result cannot be followed up on.
