Mr. Jim Gibson:

Some of the analysis on retention has shown the greater number of social workers who leave are aged between 24 and 29 years. They travel; they go to Australia and America. There is also the calibre as we move forward. There is another avenue in which I strongly believe, and Fred McBride and I have discussed it. There are many mature professional people in the community and voluntary sector who would like to follow a career in social work but due to their financial and family commitments cannot go off to college for four years to do a masters degree. We welcome the recommendation in the report on the high level group to examine this issue. If I could ask a training university to develop a course that would allow our staff to go on block release but remain in employment we would get two things - we would get people who are committed to our agency and want to remain in our agency and we would also invest in their professional development through professional qualification. We need to move quickly on that to bolster our staff. The demand is outstripping the supply in Ireland at present. We do not train enough social workers. There are other avenues for social workers to go to now in disability, elderly and mental health services. We are in competition with them. We would like to get to a place where we could have an engagement with colleges. Our agency provides an immense contribution to the training of social workers by way of professional clinical placements across Ireland.