Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am in the complex. I even went to the bother, while I was listening, of putting the Leinster House logo up as a backdrop. It is amazing what one can discover while sitting listening to incisive contributions.

I have just one or two brief questions for the Minister. I will preface them by saying that, as public representatives, most of us, with some notable exceptions, are not professionally equipped to deal with the nature of inquiries that come through our constituency offices with regard to childcare and social work. They are invariably problematic, emotionally charged issues. My overwhelming impression from the engagement I have had is of goodwill on all sides from the point of view not only of people like social workers working with Tusla but also of concerned family members, relations of children in care, etc. The overriding impression I have, however, is of a service under enormous pressure to deal with the volume of cases it deals with and of social workers who are stretched beyond breaking point in many respects in trying to deal with their caseloads. In many respects, notwithstanding their exceptional commitment, there is a high risk of cases being reduced to paper exercises, desktop analyses and inadequate opportunities to engage. That is reflective of skills shortages not just in social work but across a whole range of disciplines in social care, whether speech and language therapy or social work, even in mainstream medical areas.

Given the fact that that issue is at best a long-term fix, is there any interim, innovative, outside-the-box thinking as to how we can resource this area better in respect of the required level of care, observation and attention to the childcare providers, the recipients of care and the professionals dealing with them? It is an area that, in all my time in the Oireachtas, seems to be something of a Cinderella service that is stretched always to the point of breaking. Given the fact that there are recruitment difficulties in all these disciplines now, do we have to face up to what the ultimate solution may be? Whereas we have to recruit many more childcare and social workers and, obviously, have more foster parents, if we will not be able to recruit in the social work area the numbers we need full-time, there will have to be interim solutions. If there are not interim solutions, there are risks to the service being provided. How do we think outside the box in respect of that recruitment process?