Mr. Mark Toland:

There are a number of barriers and we have articulated them in the report. We believe it would make them more efficient. One is simply the governance structure from the top, where the two organisations come together. They have good policies. The Children First guidance is an excellent document. It is a question of making those policies live on the front line and in front-line services. We believe there was a gap between the governance of the two at a national level and in the delivery of local services. They have, to a certain extent, plugged that gap with the introduction of a new formal structured meeting process that will bring together local senior managers to ensure that Children First guidelines are delivered on the front line. Numerous committees are in operation. We simply comment on ensuring that the national committees ensure that policy is delivered on the front line.

Tusla is still a relatively new organisation. It came into existence in 2014. The structure of Tusla is different to An Garda Síochána. Tusla has 17 areas while the Garda has 28 divisions. It ends up with managers having to deal with more than one Garda division. Those systems do not help. There is little co-location of staff. The joint interviewing was disappointing. They need to train more social workers to participate in those interviews. We made several recommendations that we believe would help those two organisations to work more effectively and to be more dynamic. Certainly an electronic system of passing information between those two agencies would really help.