Children’s Rights in the Balance: OCO Annual Report for 2025 highlights urgent need for UNCRC to be incorporated into Irish law

Children’s Rights in the Balance: OCO Annual Report for 2025 highlights urgent need for UNCRC to be incorporated into Irish law

There were 1,778 complaints about children’s public services to the Ombudsman for Children’s Office (OCO) in 2025, with education (31%), Tusla (20%) and health services (14%) topping the list of concerns from the public. This is in line with last year’s figures. The OCO’s Annual Report for 2025, Children’s Rights in the Balance, details another extremely busy year across the Office, with complaints becoming more complex and 15% referring to more than one agency. Of the 1,552 individual complaints, 81% came from parents and 4% from children themselves. The OCO engaged with more than 2,500 children last year through our rights education workshops, school visits and outreach work around the country, including to IPAS and Direct Provision centres, CAMHS services and centres with unaccompanied children.

2025 also saw a number of welcome improvements on key issues of concern continuously highlighted by the OCO. There was a commitment from Government to develop a dedicated Child and Family Homelessness Action Plan, which is essential to tackling the scourge of child and family homelessness; the introduction of support for child defendants in the courts, an issue we raised following our work with children at Oberstown Children’s Detention Campus; and the inclusion of children in the regulatory framework for homecare support packages, which we know will make a huge difference to children with complex healthcare needs and their families.

Commenting on the OCO’s Annual Report for 2025, Ombudsman for Children Dr Niall Muldoon said:

“We’ve called our report, ‘Children’s Rights in the Balance’ because we believe we are at a pivotal moment in time for rights across the board. As Ireland prepares to take over the EU presidency in just two months’ time, the State can show it is a true leader in Europe on children’s rights, by moving toward the full and direct incorporation of the UNCRC into Irish law. This would show that at a time when many are walking away from international commitments, Ireland is walking towards them.

“Some of the case studies of the children featured in our Annual Report this year highlight the real difference incorporation would make. 10-year-old Zach* is a disabled young boy who spent the summer worrying about losing his SNA who was trained for his specific needs. Siblings Rebecca* and Paul* aged 4 and 5, faced long delays in having mould issues rectified in their Approved Housing Body (AHB) home. Had the UNCRC been part of our legislation, the best interests of Zach, Rebecca and Paul would have been paramount when decisions were being made around these situations from the start.

“We also feature the story of Adam*, a young boy subject to a child protection concern at school. This highlights a wider concern for us around the adequacy and accessibility of the current complaints’ procedures in schools. We believe it is time for a serious review of how complaints are handled in schools to ensure they are resolved effectively and include the voices of children and parents.

“Our Annual Report for 2025 also highlights the consistent issues around the resourcing of children’s services. We see this every year through the complaints we receive about waiting lists for housing, Assessment of Need (AON), Children Disability Network Team (CDNT) services, Primary Care services, a lack of school places, and CAMHS. While we can’t direct public bodies on how to use their resources, it is clear that these delays are having a significant adverse impact on children. We have repeatedly said that budgets are all about choices and at the moment our budget process is not child centred. We only need to look to the €38 million spent on private Special Emergency Arrangements in 2025 as an example of that.

“Reflecting on 2025 I am really proud of the hard work and dedication of every single staff member in our Office, without whom, none of the achievements over the past year would have been possible. And while there has been much progress made on issues like Official recognition of the need for a specific family homelessness plan, youth justice and the need for oversight for the families of children with complex healthcare needs in homecare arrangements, there is much more to do.  Pressing problems like the crisis in our care system for children and equal access to high quality services for children need to be treated with the necessary sense of urgency by Government.

“The State has a real chance to show its commitment to children’s rights by moving to fully and directly incorporating the UNCRC into our laws, 34 years since ratification. By doing so, in a time of growing cynicism about whether international law matters, where rights are in the balance, a small country on the edge of Europe – would send a clear message: they matter here.”

ENDS

 

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