Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairperson for facilitating me. I will take up some of my earlier questions and extend them a bit further. The witnesses may recall that I raised the whole issue of consistency in reporting and in how thresholds are adhered to. It is confusing and incredible that while Tusla has been around since 2014, the Children First Act was enacted in 2015 and training across all tiers of child protection services has been fully rolled out, the very agency that co-ordinates child protection in this country has not achieved consistency. I find that hard to fathom. I speak as someone who received training and who was on the front line in this area just a few months ago. Many of my colleagues in the teaching sector are still very frustrated.

I would like to hear how Tusla will address that lack of consistency in thresholds. It is one thing to train people and to know how to handle sensitive information and relay it up that chain of command but it is an entirely different thing to have confidence that the mechanisms of Tusla are working to protect that child at the end of that supply chain.

Tusla deals with many serious and genuine cases but as with all reporting mechanisms of State, there are those reports that turn out to be false or even vexatious. I received an email in this regard some weeks ago and sometimes in an acrimonious break-up, everything gets thrown across the table in terms of accusations. How does Tusla deal with an accusation that has clearly been established to be vexatious without a shred of truth to it? Does it ever refer cases on to the Director of Public Prosecutions when its time as a State body has been wasted, when court time has been wasted and when real cases are being backlogged and kept out of those courts? I would like to hear from the witnesses on that. It would offer some assurance to people, so I hope for a response.