The discovery that a child has disappeared and is presumed dead, four years after they were last seen, has left the public and State authorities reeling.
It is particularly disturbing that the apparent death of a boy, who would be aged seven if still alive, after he vanished from his north Co Dublin home in 2020 or 2021, came almost a year to the day after another boy, Kyran Durnin, from Co Louth, was reported missing and is now presumed dead.
Kyran would be aged nine if he was alive today. He was reported missing at the end of August 2024 and was last seen alive in 2022. His mother had informed his school in late summer 2022 that he would not be returning as the family was moving to Northern Ireland.
However, the family continued to live at Emer Terrace in Dundalk, but there was no sign of the boy. Amid concerns for his welfare, the child and family agency Tusla sought a face-to-face meeting with him and the family last year.
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The agency reported its concerns to the Garda when this did not happen and he was declared missing.
Suspicions grew and his case was upgraded to a murder investigation in October. Despite extensive Garda searches, including using diggers at and around Emer Terrace, Kyran’s remains have not been located.
Details of the new case, in which the boy has not been named, began to emerge on Monday as gardaí took control of a large area of open land in Donabate, north Co Dublin, where they believe the three-year-old’s remains lie.
It emerged on Monday that Tusla had the previous Friday reported serious concerns to the Garda about the boy’s welfare. This was on foot of a report the agency had received from the Department of Social Protection after it had conducted a standard check on a social welfare claim involving the child.
It is understood that check had found no evidence the boy was enrolled in a school or had attended other services.
Following inquiries with the boy’s parents – his mother is still living in Donabate; his father is abroad – gardaí concluded that the boy died four or five years ago.
Missing, feared dead: unanswered questions as Gardaí search for vanished Dublin boy
It is not known how he died, with conflicting accounts, including reports that he was killed by someone known to him or that he died in his sleep and, amid subsequent panic, his body was buried.
On Tuesday evening came the news that he had been in Tusla care for an extended period. Following queries from The Irish Times the agency confirmed it had engaged with the family from 2017, at the family’s request. It is understood the parents planned to give the boy up for adoption and he was taken into voluntary care.
However, the boy was reunited with the parents when he was around two years of age and Tusla closed the case in late 2020.
Speaking on RTÉ on Thursday Tusla chief executive Kate Duggan said reports from the social work team in northeast Dublin this week indicate there “were not child protection concerns in relation to this family” when the case was closed.
“The initial indications from the service is that they believe the decision [to close the boy’s file] was the right decision,” she said.
[ Conflicting witness statements emerge concerning missing boy, presumed deadOpens in new window ]
She said that a “rapid review” of the case was under way which would take about two weeks, the findings of which would be referred to the National Review Panel (NRP), an independent body that reviews serious, dangerous incidents involving, or deaths of, children or young people in the care of Tusla or known to the agency.
Among the issues any review will look at, a senior social work source told The Irish Times, will be the risk assessment that was carried out on the family before the boy was reunited with them, whether the family was monitored after reunification – and, if so, how intensively – and the rationale for the level of monitoring.
“Assessment of risk should continue post-reunification,” he said.
“There are different frameworks or models used but all require engagement with key people and services in the child’s life, and if or where appropriate in the parents’ life also, such as mental health services, addiction services and the like.
“This will obviously also include the family and maybe extended family, but also school or preschool services, public health nurse and any HSE or Tusla services the family is linked in to.”
But this boy returned to his family just as the Covid-19 pandemic arrived in Ireland.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio on Thursday, Duggan said: “What we would have to establish is if Covid was an impact on that child or family accessing any other services after that period of our involvement ending.”
In late 2020, as Tusla was exiting the boy’s life, Ireland was entering one of the toughest lockdowns in Europe, the chief executive of the Children’s Rights Alliance, Tanya Ward, received a call from a north Dublin school principal.
“He was really angry at what was happening,” she said this week.
“He was saying: ‘Do you not realise there are children who will not eat now because the school is not open? There are children who literally depend on coming to schools to get fed. What they hell is going to be done about this’?”
Ward recalls multiple pleadings from her organisation’s members for schools and early-learning centres to be allowed to remain open, even on a limited basis, for the most vulnerable children: those in poverty and with additional needs.
“In the UK they kept their schools open for children on free school meals schemes [the poorest children]. Here we just couldn’t get the schools open.”
CRA members such as Barnardos, Focus Ireland, the Irish Refugee Council and the Irish Traveller Movement were worried about children locked down in overcrowded homes, many without access to adequate heating, food or wifi, where parents might be struggling too with addiction, mental health issues and domestic violence.
“Getting schools open was about education but the real concern was: ‘Oh no, the people who do some of the most salient [child protection and welfare] referrals [to Tusla] were those people who were no longer seeing children – grandparents, aunts, uncles and frontline services like teachers and SNAs,” said Ward.
Their concerns were borne out.
In his 2021 annual report the then special rapporteur on child protection, Prof Conor O’Mahony, wrote: “Children were forced to stay in unsafe home environments, at a time when levels of domestic abuse increased significantly and ... the flow of referrals to child protection services was disrupted due to school closures and other lockdown measures.
“Home visits by social workers and access visits were limited or conducted in difficult circumstances due to social distancing requirements.”
Tusla was alive to the increased risk children faced. In April 2020 Tusla’s chief executive at the time, Bernard Gloster, noted referrals were “lower than usual at this time”.
He said “schools who account for about a quarter of referrals” were closed and appealed “to anyone with a concern about the wellbeing or safety of a child during this time to contact the local duty social work office where the child lives”.
There were no contacts or calls of concern regarding the then toddler whose remains are now being searched for in Donabate.
[ Search for missing boy ‘traumatic’ for local Donabate communityOpens in new window ]
Since Covid, referrals have increased year-on-year to 96,666 last year and are projected to surpass 100,000 this year.
On Wednesday, Minister for Children Norma Foley said Tusla would check on the welfare of all children who were in its care or who were known to it during the Covid period, and whose cases are now closed.
“It behoves us all ... I am very conscious of the Covid period,” she said.
This will involve a review of about 38,000 files. It was unclear on Thursday whether extra resources would be provided by the Department to Tusla for this review.
A spokesman for the department said it was “liaising with Tusla on this matter and the process is still in the early stages of planning.
“For 2025 Tusla have been given a budget of over €1.25 billion. Tusla have approximately 5,700 whole-time equivalents on hand at the end of June 2025.”
Ward is unsure how such a welfare check of cases will work, given her understanding that families will have a right to refuse to engage if there are no new welfare concerns to answer.
“But without a doubt we need a focus on the impact Covid had on our child welfare and protection system, and to look at whether Tusla and other organisations are sufficiently funded,” she said.
“What this past week tells me is that Kyran is not exceptional; it tells me another child has slipped though the net because the child protections system was not working the way it should during Covid.
“And it tells me we were right to be concerned.”
