Mr. Fred McBride:

In response to some of the Chairman's questions which are very searching, I absolutely accept there are still some structural weaknesses. We are an organisation of more than 4,000 people. We have embarked on a broad and deep transformation for just over three years but we cannot fix every structural weakness in that time. It takes longer. I accept there are areas where there are some structural weaknesses, for example, reviews in foster care. Some of those children are with relatives, they are settled and we believe they are safe, or as safe as they can be. There are not necessarily any immediate risks. There are some mitigating factors there. I do not deny there are structural weaknesses and changes we need to make after three years.

I accept some of the Chairman's points about recruitment and we are doing something about that. We accept that recruitment of administrative grades is equally important so that we can support social workers and free them up to do the work they need to do. We have an ambition to create a senior social work practitioner in every social work team in the country. We plan to roll that out as soon as possible. Inter-agency communication remains a challenge. As the chief operations officer has said, we have some mechanisms in place such as child protection case conferences that several professionals attend.

We need to get better where a teacher, public health nurse or garda refers the matter to us and wants to hear back about what we have done with it. We are not always good at doing that. Often, we deal with a referral and do not give sufficient feedback to the referrer to let him or her know what has happened. Interagency communication is an ongoing challenge.

The outsourcing of foster care was mentioned. Only 6% of children in care are with private foster carers. Private foster carers have entered the frame because of a deficit in direct State provision. They have been with us in this and many other jurisdictions since the 1990s and much earlier in others. They have become a reality, a fact of life and a fact of the range of provision that exists. Inevitably, they will be used when some of our foster carers are unable to take particularly challenging youngsters.

A question was asked about whether we needed a full-blown out-of-hours service covering the whole country. We have a full team in the greater Dublin area and Cork and the rest of the country is covered by an on-call service. We undertook a demand analysis before we set up that service. There is not usually a demand in rural areas for a permanent team of social workers or others who are sitting around waiting to be called. It could be argued that, if there was a team, people would use it. That is probably a fair point, but if we were to have a full-blown out-of-hours service covering every area in the country, it would require significant further investment and we would have to ask whether it would be fully used. That would have to be analysed and tested.

Regarding a full audit of Tusla, we are subject to five or six separate scrutiny processes. HIQA is investigating nine of our areas and we are participating in the Charleton commission of inquiry and the commission of inquiry into the Grace report, which is covering many years. The Data Protection Commissioner will examine our data protection systems and processes. A large number of substantial scrutiny exercises are under way simultaneously. That said, if a decision was made that a full audit of Tusla's current position and where it needs to reach should be undertaken, I would be happy to participate in such an exercise provided that it did not detract from our day-to-day business of protecting children. I have made the point publicly that there is a real risk that the level of scrutiny that is being visited upon this agency - five or six different processes simultaneously - is beginning to draw time, attention, resources and social workers away from practice. We are happy to participate in audits, but we need to keep the service going.