Mr. Fred McBride:

I thank the committee for giving us the opportunity to talk about the HIQA investigation and report. We acknowledge and welcome the recommendations. I also welcome HIQA’s acknowledgement that there is now clear strategic direction and a long-term vision of what we want to achieve. HIQA has made it clear and consistently stated both in this report and in other inspection reports that where a concern about a child is expressed to Tusla and we have information to indicate that the child is at immediate risk, the child gets an immediate response and that response is deemed to be protective and keeps them safe or reduces the risk.

HIQA also confirmed the consistent finding of Tusla staff advocating strongly for the children and families for whom it works. They have shown a capacity to maintain good relationships and improve outcomes for children. Of course, we receive 53,000 referrals a year. We cannot possibly respond to 53,000 referrals immediately and therefore, of course, a degree of prioritisation must take place. This HIQA report focuses on those referrals where it is not deemed that children are at immediate risk, how we prioritise these referrals and what action we take on them.

It was reassuring for us, albeit a very challenging read in the report, that the investigation report highlights exactly those issues faced by the agency which we had already identified and which we have been proactively addressing, mostly over the past two years. I know the agency is four years old, but in the first two years we were really just trying to keep services going and it was not until 2016 that additional investment was made available to us - very welcome as it was - that we began to reflect on and analyse the work that needed to be done. We embarked on a very comprehensive organisational cultural programme and reform. One of the HIQA external advisers, to whom I spoke the other day, remarked that it was both an ambitious and a radical attempt to change child-protection services, which is what it is.

I point out some of the significant progress we have made since Tusla was established. By 9 July we will have rolled out what we are calling the national childcare information system, an integrated computerised system. This will mean that for the first time in this country all our 17 functional operational areas will be on one integrated IT system, which we hope will eliminate inconsistencies that previously occurred with a mixture of paper-based systems and a plethora of obsolete and outdated computer systems.

As the report acknowledged, we have been developing many interagency protocols to assist in working with key partners, particularly in An Garda Síochána and the HSE. The report also highlights, particularly in the governance review, that interagency and collaborative working was a consistent strength of Tusla, with many examples of children being safer as a result.

We have also invested considerable time and money in what we call our prevention, partnership and family-support programme, which supports families in their local communities with initiatives such as Parenting 24-7 and Meitheal. We have developed the child protection notification system so that for children who are subject to a child protection plan there is live and accessible information available on a multiagency basis which the Garda, medical staff and accident and emergency units can access across the country. In another first for the country, we now have an out-of-hours service that covers the whole country rather than just Dublin and Cork.

Despite that progress, I absolutely agree that there are inconsistencies in our system and in our response to referrals where a child is not identified as being at immediate risk, as highlighted by HIQA. We are actively addressing this through our new national approach to practice. The last time the members of the committee visited us in the Brunel building, they had an opportunity to see some of the detail of that national approach to practice, which we are callings Signs of Safety. We are confident this will bring a consistency throughout the country so that children and families receive a consistent, timely and proportionate response.

We also accept HIQA's findings that we need to further improve our governance and accountability arrangements. Some further key posts are required in that regard. Accountability is about identifying problems and taking responsibility for these problems, understanding their causes and putting in place actions to remedy these. That is exactly what we have been doing for the past two and a half years in particular, but also before that.

The agency is accountable to a board and, as I emphasised at the press conference yesterday, staff are held to account in a proportionate and fair way through robust HR procedures.

I wish to speak about the legislative context and we may get a chance to discuss it in more detail. In particular I refer to the legislative context concerning retrospective and historical allegations of abuse. That is where an adult comes forward now to say that something happened to them as a child. We have been thrust into a space by case law, which places a responsibility on us to balance fair and due process for the person against whom the allegation has been made on the one hand and on the other hand trying to make an assessment of the risk to children now and what we need to do about that. There are significant legal constraints around that and we may get an opportunity to explore some of that in more detail today.

Nevertheless, in the past two years we have reduced the number of unallocated retrospective allegations by approximately 60% which, by any industry standard, is a pretty reasonable improvement. The pace of change has been rapid and I accept the Minister's supportive comments about what we have achieved so far. We need to increase the pace of change and we look forward to the discussion with the oversight group the Minister intends to set up on how that increase in pace might be achieved.

We accept the recommendations that HIQA set out and see them as an endorsement of our programme of reform. We undoubtedly have some way to go but we are actively addressing all the issues to ensure practice across the country is consistent and of a high quality in order that we can provide a timely, proportionate and appropriate response to children and families. We acknowledge that quality is variable at the moment.