In the past year, over 30 young people under 18, who entered Ireland as unaccompanied minors seeking refugee status, have disappeared from their HSE-operated accommodation. None have been found.

In all, 317 minors have disappeared in similar circumstances since 2001. Only a handful have turned up. Campaigners are now pointing to an apparent ambivalence and lack of focus on these missing foreign-born minors by the government, while at the same time Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has pledged a referendum on children's rights.

Leading missing persons campaigner, Fr Aquinas Duffy . . . who runs a missing persons website . . . has described the numbers of unaccompanied minors currently missing without trace as "disturbing and potentially very sinister".

"There seems to be this casual attitude at official level that says, 'ah well, they're probably gone home to their native country', but the reality is we don't know where these children are, " Duffy told the Sunday Tribune.

Paul Gilligan, chief executive of the ISPCC, shares that view. "If as many Irish children went missing and remained missing in the past five years, there would be outrage among parents and voters and instant and significant political reaction, " Gilligan said.

At any one time, there are approximately 200 separated children in state care. The creation of two new posts of Child Protection Special Rapporteurs in the wake of the recent statutory rape scandal was welcomed by the Irish Refugee Council (IRC). The IRC wants the new appointees to examine the legislation in relation to separated children.

The IRC has long advocated reform of the present model of care that is dependent on residential hostels. It wants fostering of unaccompanied minors to be a more available option, with child protection measures in place for vetting of carers.

Disturbing internal HSE documents, obtained under FOI by Village Magazine earlier this year, showed that the HSE suspects that some of the children who have gone missing from its care are being used for trafficking or prostitution. The documents also said there was a lack of appropriate placements for unaccompanied minors. Gardai have also expressed concern about the lack of staff in hostels when they have gone to investigate the cases of missing children, the papers show.

Most unaccompanied minors who go missing are boys. The most recent of these included 17- year-old Yuri Arlow who disappeared from his Sandford Road accommodation in Ranelagh in July, and Printisor Buse, a 16-year-old Romanian who went missing from his accommodation at Ballyhooley Road in Cork last March.

"These young people have no advocates or no worried parents harassing politicians to find their children. They simply have no voice, " Gilligan insisted.