Trafficking fear as 316 foreign children in state care go missing
Wednesday August 02 2006
New figures from the Irish Refugee Council show that 316 children who arrived in Ireland as unaccompanied minors have gone missing, sparking new concerns about child trafficking.
A leading missing persons campaigner, Fr Aquinas Duffy, has described the disappearance of the children as "sinister" and "of grave concern".
Non-national children are much more likely to go missing than their Irish counterparts, a fact borne out on the Garda missing children's website.
Of the 63 postings on the site, 57 are of non-national children and teenagers who have disappeared in the past four years. The youngest of these was just three when he went missing.
The remaining six are Irish children, four of whom are long-term missing person cases where the children vanished up to 29 years ago. The remaining two have been missing for the past two years.
"Five or six years ago very few children went missing in Ireland and, if they did, it was most likely from residential care. Five years down the line, the numbers have suddenly increased massively," said ISPCC chief executive Paul Gilligan.
"Across Europe there is an acknowledgement that child trafficking is a problem. We are hugely concerned that these children might have been trafficked.
"If even one Irish child went missing in the morning, there would be pictures all over the papers and a major brouhaha. But about 60 non-national children go missing each year and there is no brouhaha," he said.
"Most of the children who go missing are unaccompanied so they don't have any parents lobbying to ensure everything is being done to trace them," he added.
Fr Duffy said it is "of grave concern" that children can vanish from state care and not be traced for several years.
"It is a cause of concern that quite a number of unaccompanied minors who come into the country disappear. One has to wonder is this an organised thing and, if so, who is behind it.
"In the absence of knowing what exactly has happened to them, there is concern that there could be a sinister motive behind their disappearance," he added.
Heilean Rosenstock-Armie, a spokesperson for the Irish Refugee Council, said that while it is impossible to know how and why these children went missing until they are found, it was reasonable to assume some had been trafficked.
Care centres housing separated young asylum seekers are not subject to the same rigorous checks as residential centres for Irish children, she said.
In some centres, there can be just one care worker to supervise 30 children.
"Nobody is looking out for them. It is easy for a trafficker to walk in and, more worryingly, for a child to walk out with them."
A Garda spokesman said there can be particular difficulties in tracing non-national children as some of them do not want to be found.
"They are coming into the country as unaccompanied minors and are put in special HSE care centres. They stay there for a night or two and then disappear. Many will have arranged all this before they come over."
He added that most are thought to disappear because they want to try to get into Britain or because they feel their asylum application will be unsuccessful.
"The big difficulty in tracing them is that many do not want to be found. Also, when gardai approach people from their own country, they can be reluctant to talk. They feel as if they are ratting on their friend."
- Breda Heffernan
