Mr. Fred McBride:

We have been in preparation for mandatory reporting for some time now, indeed before the Minister's announcement. We submitted, as part of the Estimates process last year, three case scenarios. These were a modest increase in referrals which may result from mandatory reporting, a moderate increase and a more extreme increase. Ultimately we went with the more modest increase in referrals, based on research that we had carried out on other jurisdictions which had introduced this model. There is a school of thought that, given that the Children First guidance has been out for some years, that people have been acting as if mandatory reporting is already in place. Whether that is true or not is difficult to say. It is also difficult to be absolutely precise about the numbers of additional referrals that Tusla may get. We have developed a business case on the more modest increase. In preparation for that we have 304 staff of all grades in the recruitment process currently. Some 185 of them are social workers. We are hoping to land a significant number of those in 2017, before year end. A number may then fall over into the early part of next year.