INVESTIGATION: Thousands of Incidents of Children Going Missing from Tusla Care - 19/11/2025

A child living in State care was reported missing 274 times in just one year, new figures obtained by The Journal Investigates reveal.The data, released by Tusla under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI), shows a pattern of repeated disappearances from Ireland’s State-run residential centres, with some young people going missing dozens of times every year.Internal records reveal that children in Tusla-run homes were reported missing on nearly 7,000 occasions from January 2020 to September 2025.In a statement to The Journal Investigates, a Tusla spokesperson said most missing reports do not indicate that a child has vanished for an extended period, but reflect brief absences recorded under a strict reporting protocol agreed with gardaí.Investigative journalist at The Journal Investigates, Patricia Devlin, joined us on The Agenda this morning to tell us more about this. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.