Children’s Rights Alliance Report Card 2010

On Monday, the Children’s Rights Alliance launched its annual ‘report card‘. The report card examines whether the Government has honoured the promises it has made to children living in Ireland. These commitments are found in Social Partnership Agreement, Towards 2016; the Programme for Government 2007-2012 and the Renewed Programme for Government, 2009; the National Action Plan for Social Inclusion 2007-2016, and the Ryan Report Implementation Plan, 2009. The executive summary of the report is here and the full report is here. The Alliance awarded the government a ‘D-‘ grade overall.

The Alliance says:

In Ireland, we believe that we value children, but the startling evidence shows otherwise. Of the 29 commitments, 7 have made progress or shown improvement, 9 have remained static or cannot yet be monitored, and a further 13 are lagging seriously behind. In times of crisis and emergency, it is only natural that we would expect children to come first, but the evidence shows the opposite is true, on some issues the Government is putting its head in the sand.

In a similar vein, this article in yesterday’s Irish Times partly attributed the rise in the number of children taken into care last year to the economic downturn.