Ms Angela Fitzgerald:

The Chair has raised an important issue. We engage very regularly with Tusla. In the past 18 months, we have observed continued challenges, through our inspection process, in a number of areas, where between 25% to 50% of areas have unallocated social workers. That contributes to real concerns for us. The Chair reflected one of those. We have had a lot of engagement with Tusla, which has a medium-term strategy around its structures at a regional level around the staffing model and whether there are other ways of staffing in the context of the regulatory framework they are operating within. In the very near time, we felt that if we kept doing what we were doing, we would keep getting more issues. To some extent, we were also mindful that when a light is continuously shone on a service, where there are already challenges in attracting and retaining staff, further challenges are created in that space.

Ms Grogan and her team - Ms Eva Boyle is the lead inspector - developed an alternative approach, which is a national framework and improvement plan aimed at trying to support consistent and standardised improvement. It is also about the opportunity to learn how that can be brought forward, where it has been successful in one area. We hope that has a number of benefits. It helps the local area away from constantly running to stand still. It looks at best practice and tries to share it. It also looks at things that might be outside the remit of the area itself, which might require a different solution either through Tusla, or Tusla and ourselves with the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. I have been talking quite regularly with the Secretary General around this whole issue. He is very supportive of this change in approach. We would be very happy to come back to the committee to report on progress in this area. It is a real concern for us.