Courts Service Child Care Statistics for 2011

We publish below statistics for child care applications made, and granted, to the District Courts in 2011, obtained from the Courts Service. These are the latest available at the moment and we will publish later figures as they become available.

The statistics should be read with caution. The number of applications does not reflect the number of families and children under HSE supervision or in HSE care, as there may be multiple applications for the same family or the same child. The kind of orders sought also vary in different parts of the country: in some areas Care Orders are sought for a limited period of time, in others Interim Care Orders are made and then repeatedly renewed, with Care Orders made more rarely and then until the child is 18. Repeat applications may well be counted separately, though they relate to essentially the same case, thus showing a large volume of applications.

Readers will notice great variation between the centres outside Dublin, with towns of roughly the same size showing hundreds of applications in some instances, while others record numbers barely out of single figures. As the project progresses, we hope to have explanations for these variations, and also more insight into how the statistics are compiled.

Nonetheless, the statistics do show which are the busiest child care courts and they have been used to guide the project in allocating time to various courts.

The total number of applications received in 2011 was 7,928, of which 41 per cent were received in Dublin. The next busiest courts were Cork, Waterford, Limerick, Galway and Letterkenny.

(Supervision orders, Emergency Care Orders, Care Orders, Interim Care Orders)