Professor Robbie Gilligan:

Obviously, there is the Higher Education Authority but that is on the provider side of education; it not on the employer side. For example, we do not have national data - none that I can find anyhow - on where social workers are actually employed. We do not have national data on projected needs of social work for employment. Those are important planning requirements so we need a one-desk, co-ordinated approach to planning for social work across sectors because social work now spans the Departments of Justice and Equality, Health, Children and Youth Affairs and other Departments but there is no lead Department on that. The Department of Children and Youth Affairs might be because it is particularly concerned about the justice situation. The best estimate we have is that Tusla hires approximately 40% of all social workers. There are 4,500 registered social workers in the State. We do not know how many of those are currently working. We are not able to say exactly where they are working. That is basic information that we need.