Mr. Bernard Gloster:

To be fair, there are three issues that pivot around the Deputy's question. She is correct in that the minimum cost of having a child in residential care is between €6,000 and €7,000 per week. There are some exceptional cases, which we call special emergency arrangements, that could run up to €24,000 per week in some cases. It is important to be on the level about that. The capitation rate for the provider of private foster care is approximately €1,200 per week. The foster parents still get the same amount whether it is public or private, but the cost to the State is approximately €1,200 per week, and then there is the cost to the State of public foster care.

I am sure Deputy Costello with his professional background will understand this but part of the difficulty is that it is not a zero-sum game, and I would not want to reduce the narrative to that. Apart from retaining foster carers or, indeed, residential care settings, we are increasingly seeing a different and complex context from which some children coming into State care present. A small number will require increasingly intensive services that come at an enormous cost. The answer to that, as I recently said in a media interview, is not simply in Tusla.