Mr. Bernard Gloster:

When I saw Deputy Costello coming back in, I thought he was going to raise that. There is good news and not-so-good news. The good news is that we have increased the resource profile to be able to staff Tusla in recent years. Tusla has never had as large a workforce employed as in the three-year period including Mr. Pat Smyth's tenure as interim CEO for a year, before I came, and in my own time. There were many years in which the agency could not fill jobs at all. That said, we reached full employment at the end of 2020. We got significant additional resources thanks to the Minister. We struggled with recruitment due to the pandemic and the cyberattack.

We also struggle in our retention of staff regardless of the pandemic or the cyberattack and I do not want to be hiding behind those. Roughly speaking, we have approximately 4,800 employees and with whole-time equivalents that might number 5,000 people. We are trying to have approximately 5,150 people by the end of this year. It is a big ask. Within that we are down approximately 150 social workers. Essentially, we would not have been down that number but in quarter 3 of 2021 we took one of our biggest retention hits not because there was anything particularly wrong with Tusla other than that, as I have said, this work is extremely complex. I do not think the social work profession would dispute the fact it is probably the most complex area of social work. It is not for everybody. We took a big hit last year in the third quarter because of something that is a good development but which is challenging. All the health and social care sectors have now grown to multidisciplinary teams. In the health service, for example, there are doctors, physiotherapists, speech therapists, occupational therapists and now every team has a social worker, including child and mental health service, CAMHS, teams and mental health teams. There is a limited base.

Approximately 238 students will graduate this year in Ireland as social workers. For the past two years, with the support of the Minister and the board, I have taken the decision to offer them all jobs before they graduate. My fellow employers in the health service and other places would say what is there for them but people make choices. Out of 238 who will graduate this year, 181 applied for posts with Tusla, 140 have been panelled and we have commenced offers. As I said, we are down 150 social workers and the members can note the pattern there. We will lose people this year as well, which will be a challenge. The answer to having staff into the future, apart from growing additional social work places, is to have a diversity of the workforce at the front line, more social care workers and more therapeutic staff working in social work-led teams. That is a longer-term bigger policy change. For now we are doing everything we can to grow the number of social workers in order to recruit them. We have got good at recruiting. We need to find ways to get better at retaining staff. We must also accept there will be a level of retention challenge in this type of work. I could not but say, and I know that Deputy Costello will know this better than I do, we have the most committed and dedicated people working for us in every staff grade, be it clerical staff supporting social workers on the front line, social care staff or social work staff. It is the most rewarding but the most demanding and challenging work and it is not the easiest. We are in a good place compared to where we were but we are under pressure.