Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I will make one point. Ms Duggan spoke about the professionalisation of foster carers, which reminded me of something several foster carers said to me to the effect that if the weekly allowance were to be turned into an annual salary, it would amount to approximately €18,500, which is not much of a salary given the level of work they do. If we are going down that route of classifying them as professionals and acknowledging their work and professionalisation, the level of allowance they get speaks volumes.

I would like to drill into one thing and then I have another question. Ms Duggan spoke about the rising complexity, which is something that has been acknowledged a variety of times. Does Ms Duggan have any insight or research into why that is? A couple of things come to mind that I would like to explore. One is that we have anecdotal information about, say, children coming into care later, which breeds more trauma and gives rise to more complex needs. Equally, science and safety say that we should have family support plans. The children coming into care have already had this and had it not work in terms of meeting their needs. Obviously, those needs will be more complex further down the line. What is happening outside Tusla's control that is contributing to that? I appreciate that there may be plenty of things Tusla does not have control over that contribute to the complexity. These would be important for this committee to know about to raise with the Minister or for us to raise in other ways.

The second issue relates to consistency. One piece that came into my head was foster care committees. I could open up a can of worms here and go off in all sorts of different directions but I will try not to. However, one of the issues with-----