Ms Kate Duggan:

I am not sure it is widely understood that educational support services are positioned in and are part of Tusla. Obviously the policy for that service sits within the Department of Education and under the performance statement of the Minister for Education but we are responsible for the educational support service. We fund the homeschool liaison service and we garner the funding around the school completion programmes.

There are two aspects that we see. It is how we strengthen integration internally within Tusla to make sure our child welfare, child protection and education systems are better integrated to make sure we are responding in a more integrated way to children. Equally, when we met Commissioner Harris and with Mr. Finucane and the members of An Garda Síochána, including the assistant commissioner who has responsibility for juvenile liaison, we recognised the need for that integration with educational welfare officers. Over the past two years, Tusla has received significant additional funding from the Department of Education for investment in educational welfare officers and all the other investments that have been made across the education system. There is a real opportunity there for better integration and support. Trying to balance the time that is going on having access to a place in school and being able to find a place in school will actually be how services are coming together to respond to those. We know that children who do not attend State school, who are absent or who are refusing school are the red flags for us in terms of the other matters of concern.