Mr. Bernard Gloster:

There are two parts to that, namely, the structure and the culture. In my statement and in all my engagements within Tusla and in the public domain since my appointment, I have pointed out that public service organisations can become very defensive for a whole variety of reasons. They are then open to the accusation of not being transparent, with the associated mistrust. There is very little appetite then for what might be considered the good news. Several times since being appointed I have said publicly that apart from where the law prevents it, the best people to tell the people of Ireland about Tusla's problems are Tusla officials. We must be more forthright about that in a lot of different engagements. Those are my thoughts on culture. I would add that a lot of very good people in Tusla subscribe to that view. This has become a more systemic issue.

Regarding structure and Tusla becoming more local, I note that it is currently divided into 17 areas supervised by four regions, which are supervised in turn by a national centre. That structure was designed by and for the HSE. I remember it well. The HSE abandoned this structure in 2011. Public service organisations require the capacity to respond to a range of corporate and legislative issues, such as the general data protection regulation, GDPR, financial control, corporate governance, and so on. That infrastructure simply cannot be invested in 17 areas. Equally it cannot all be concentrated at the centre because then the 17 areas have no control or influence. It takes too long to complete a process, sign off on a job and so on. I have clearly stated that we have to examine critically the best geographic model to deliver Tusla's services. It must be big enough to justify investment in the corporate infrastructure but small enough to address local concerns quickly. My view is that it should have a flatter structure. The centre of Tusla should have a performance management and oversight role. The real operations, services and decisions should take place in whatever configuration of entities we finally come up with. That will take time. In the meantime it is imperative that we mitigate the gap between the local and the national.

Perhaps I have described this in a very wordy way, but in simple terms I have expanded the existing management team structure to a leadership team. This includes the regional service directors and some of the critical service directors in other parts of the organisation. That team meets fortnightly. In every fourth meeting from the start of the new year, 17 area managers will meet that group and a system performance management engagement will take place in one room. In simple terms, if an area manager in Cork says to me that he or she cannot achieve traction on allocated cases because he or she cannot recruit four people, the director of human resources will be in the same room. We will be able to deal with the challenge, bottom out the problem and knock a solution out quickly, whatever it might be. It is a very simple but quite effective measure.

That is where I am going first.