Ms Aine McGuirk:

It is that the courses do not receive the breadth of education and experience. Typically, our social workers spend six months in placement. When one hears people talk about doing these courses where people spend part of their time working, that is the professional social work course anyway. People do two long placements of three months each with one placement in a sector such as probation or Tusla child welfare and the other placement in a different sector such as mental health, medical social work or whatever. Therefore, at the end one has a person who has trained in and experienced a couple of areas of social work. He or she can make a decision about what they might like to do in terms of their work but they do so from a broad educational and knowledgeable base. By contrast, the aim of the courses in England seems to be to produce people to work just in this sector.