Review into Kyran Durnin case to stay unpublished as concern is raised over another missing child
A review by a national oversight body into the case of missing Co Louth schoolboy Kyran Durnin will not be published following the advice of the Attorney General, Minister for Children Norma Foley has said.
The National Review Panel, which investigates serious incidents including the deaths of children known to the child protection system, delivered its report on the case of Kyran, who has not been seen alive since 2022, to Ms Foley’s department on October 29th.
Kyran was reported missing in August 2024 but gardaí believe he was killed in or around June 2022, when he was aged six, and that his remains were disposed of to conceal what had happened.
Ms Foley said while she wished to publish the report in full, the Attorney General, Rossa Fanning, advised against this as “it may prejudice any potential or future prosecutions that might take place”.
The recommendations of the report have been published, however, and Ms Foley said she was committed to implementing them.
They include the development of a policy for tracking pupil movement between primary schools, including the transfer of children to and from schools in Northern Ireland, and a review of the impact of GDPR on the ability of Tusla to conduct assessments of children.
Ms Foley said a new office for children absent in education was established in Tusla during the summer.
Asked if this had detected any cases of missing children, Ms Foley said she was informed of a case “in the last day” and gardaí were investigating.
In a later update, her department said the new Tusla office had been informed by a school that a 10-year-old boy, who was a “member of a family from another country” and who had been attending school in Ireland, had not returned to the school as expected in September.
The Garda received a notification of the matter from Tusla last Friday. Officers spoke to the child’s mother who said the child had left Ireland and was now living elsewhere in Europe.
The Garda is now liaising with Interpol to confirm this. Sources say this process is continuing but there is nothing at this time to suggest foul play.
Regarding Kyran Durnin’s case, the head of the review panel Dr Helen Buckley said the “over-arching conclusion” of the review was what happened to boy “could not have been anticipated from knowledge that was available to the Tusla Social Work Department at the time”.
She said: “While the review identifies practice and policy weaknesses, it does not infer a direct or causal link between them and the outcome for Kyran.”
Ms Foley said she was committed to the implementation of the review panel’s recommendations into the Kyran Durnin case.
The report also recommended Tusla issue new safeguarding guidance for social workers; new procedures for the management of waiting lists where a child has not yet been allocated a social worker; the development of a framework for quality assurance monitoring and review for family support provider agencies; and a review of the Tusla and An Garda Síochána protocol for dealing with serious and exceptional cases.
[ Kyran Durnin investigation: New appeal issued for information on missing schoolboyOpens in new window ]
Tusla chief executive Kate Duggan said she was committed to “full transparency and meaningful reform so that we can as an agency and in collaboration with other stakeholders ensure we are doing all we can to safeguard and protect children”.
Among the recommendations is that school principals should be provided with greater clarity about the appropriate action to take if a child does not return to school, where no request has been received to remove their name from the register.
The last confirmed sighting of Kyran was in May 2022 when his mother reported him ill with Covid-19. He never finished the year in St Nicholas’ Monastery National School on Philip Street in Dundalk.
