Mr. Bernard Gloster:

I thank the Deputy. Yes, we have engagement with the universities at a number of levels. Our chief social worker and his team are engaged with them at a developmental level. The Department has a social work education group, which has the education sector on it also, and we are on that. As I said in my opening statement, I have had engagement along with my chair with the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science. So they are all of the pieces to try and move it on. To come to the core of the question, there were 184 graduates available from eight courses in Ireland this year and so far we are looking at a position where 144 registered with CORU. That is what is available to Ireland and that is certainly the amount of available positions. The need beyond Tusla exceeds that.

We did take some steps in recent years to try out different initiatives. We did do a one-round scholarship programme with Maynooth University, which started a course. We certainly got a reasonable yield out of that. They are now continuing as a provider themselves. We would look to sponsorship across the university sector in the future but it is something that we would have to get into more detailed planning about in terms of the cost and the return for it.

Again the chief social worker, who has a significant developmental role in social work practice in the agency, and his team, have put huge work into the provision of placements. We have a high number of placement supervisors across our social work workforce. We take a significant number of students. Usually, half the students in training will come to Tusla for a placement either in the first or second year of their masters programme and then they go to other providers in disability services, mental health services and so on. We, therefore, have very good placement capacity. I have indicated to the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science that we could absorb another 50 placements if the colleges had those places in place to expand the supply.