Up to 44 children missing in Tusla care at one point in 2025

Michael Bolton

There were up to 44 children missing in Tusla care at one point last year.

Documents seen by BreakingNews.ie, under Freedom of Information, show that of the children missing under Tusla's care on April 24th last year, 35 were categorised as Separated Children Seeking International Protection (SCSIP). The other children were part of the so-called Mainstream in Contact.

Of these 31 of the children were missing for over two weeks, with 21 having gone missing in 2024 and seven missing in 2023.

Children reported missing fall into two categories: the number of missing children in the mainstream care population and Separated Children Seeking International Protection (SCSIP).

The next highest amount of children missing was on March 27th, when 43 children were missing on this date.

Of those missing children, 31 were SCSIP. Four of the children were missing in 2025, with 21 missing in 2024.

On January 2nd of this year, 40 children were missing, with 29 under SCSIP. 22 of the children were missing in 2024, with seven missing in 2023.

The final check recorded in 2025 by Tusla showed 35 children were missing on December 18th: 30 of the children missing were SCSIP, with 28 children missing for over two weeks.

Of those 28, 23 went missing in 2024, with another five since 2023.

In total, 296 children went missing in 2025, an increase from 282 in 2024. Some 69 were in Tusla's care, while the majority were in private care settings.

Some 87 children were missing under voluntary care, with 12 in special care.

Where a child or young person is deemed missing, Tusla maintains active engagement with An Garda Síochána and continues all possible efforts to contact and trace the missing young person in line with An Garda Síochána/Tusla Joint Protocol.

Under the protocol, An Garda Síochána are notified once a young person is deemed missing and following Tusla and the young person’s carers have made all reasonable efforts to locate them.

Once a young person has been reported missing, An Garda Síochána have primary responsibility for investigating the young person’s whereabouts. In certain situations, where a child is absent from their care placement for more than 15 minutes, they may be reported as ‘missing’ from care under the Joint Protocol.

This could be for a range of reasons, such as missing their curfew or not returning to their placement at an agreed time.