LAST UPDATE | 4 Dec 2025

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL has determined that a review of the Tusla’s involvement with Kyran Durnin, the little boy who was reported missing last August and later presumed dead, cannot be published.

The review was carried out by the National Review Panel, which is independent of Tusla, the Child and Family Agency.

Though a number of recommendations have been made public, the Attorney General said the review itself cannot be published as it could prejudice “any potential prosecutions” in the future.

The review panel identified policy and practice weaknesses on Tusla’s side, “it does not infer a direct or causal link between them and the outcome for Kyran”.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, the review panel’s chair Helen Buckley said keeping such reports confidential is not unusual in cases where children have been harmed, because criminal investigations often run parallel to Tusla’s probe.

“We have to be very careful not to cross that investigation in any way, so that no witness is interfered with, or any evidence that we come up with is later used to prejudice at trial,” she said.

Buckley said, however, that the publishing of recommendations from the review is helpful, “because that’s the value in a review really, it’s the change that it can make”.

She added: “The fact that we were able to state that the events couldn’t have been predicted, I think it was important to be able to say that.”

The recommendations include tracking the movement of school pupils between primary schools, including those who cross the border, guidance being issued to social workers, and the development of a framework for “quality assurance monitoring” and an “outcome measurement for family support provider agencies”.

Buckley said that currently there are “informal” arrangements between the North and the Republic when it comes to tracing children authorities are concerned about, but she would like to see the governments formalise this.

She also said Tusla staff “without any obstacle, can make enquiries about children when they know that a child is at risk”. However, GDPR can sometimes inhibit their ability to establish whether there is a risk, which must be done before action can be taken.

‘Really unsatisfactory’

Tanya Ward, the chief executive of the Children’s Rights Alliance, said there are “a lot of unanswered questions” about Kyran’s disappearance. 

“It’s really unsatisfactory that we don’t have an independent review published because we need to know what happened to Kyran,” she told RTÉ’s Today with David McCullagh. 

I understand it’s an exceptional event, but it’s extremely disturbing that a child disappeared for two years before anyone knew he was gone.

Ward said the fact that the review will not be published is “not unexpected” because of the ongoing Garda investigation into the case.

“It is normal when children die and the National Review Panel does its report, if there is a Garda investigation still ongoing, often the reports aren’t published,” she said. 

But she added that there were other reviews carried out at the time of Kyran’s disappearance, including by Tusla.

“There may be the same concerns that those reports can’t be published because of the Garda investigation, but I do think transparency will be very important for Kyran.”

Asked about the recommendations in the review, Ward said Tusla has already established a team for children missing in education that sees referrals going directly to them when a child disappears from the education register and allows them to check each case to find out where the child is. 

“I think it’s a very important thing that we, after Kyran’s case, have a system like this in place now and that every child that disappears off an education register is tracked down by someone.”

Ward said resourcing remains an issue in certain parts of the country where there is a shortage of social workers, adding more people were needed to take on the “very important” role. 

Internal reform programme

Cabinet yesterday gave approval for the signing of the Childcare (Amendment) Bill 2025, which contains measures for clarifying the extent of information that can be shared between bodies in the interest of child protection and welfare.

Tusla is to publish their internal reform programme early next year, which Buckley says will be “wide-ranging”.

A review of the Tusla and Garda cooperation protocol for complex cases is also recommended by the panel

Helen Buckley said the protocol “generally works quite well”, “but cases like this are very unusual, where information needs to be exchanged urgently, but tactically and strategically”.

Kyran was reported missing alongside his mother from a Co Louth home in the August of 2024. Though her whereabouts were later established he was never found, and gardaí subsequently opened a murder investigation.

If he were still alive, he would be 9-years-old today.

No body has been found and though two people, a man and a woman, have been arrested and later released in connection with the boy’s disappearance, no one has been charged with his murder to date.

Tusla had engaged with Kyran Durnin and his family during his life, but the agency has said that engagement ended in 2022, despite the fact that Durnin stopped attending school in the South after the summer of 2022.

Tusla said that no referrals were made relating to the boy between 2022 and 2024.