Children’s experience of the legal system can be bleak and inhospitable, according to family law experts and those working with children at risk who spoke at the Oireachtas Justice Committee last week.

Chair of the Law Society’s Family and Child Law Committee Keith Walsh said there was agreement that the current family law system was broken and there was an urgent need for a specialist division to be established. Mr Walsh told members that no resources have been allocated to give effect to the voice of the child in recent legislation.”So we have a Rolls Royce piece of legislation with basically no resources attached to it,” he said.

Dr Conor O’Mahony, Senior Lecturer at the School of Law in UCC, said there was an “uneven and patchwork approach” as to whether children get to participate in family law proceedings. He said whether a child gets a chance to be heard depends on “what the case is about, where it is being heard, which judge is hearing it, and who is paying the costs”, adding that this was “a far cry from what the Constitution states should happen”.