Ms Kate Duggan:

I thank the Cathaoirleach and committee for the invitation to appear before it today. I am joined by my colleagues, Mr. Pat Smith, national director of finance and corporate services, Rosarii Mannion, national director of people and change, Jerry Hone, international director of services and integration, and Pamela Benson, head of legal services.

It has been 18 months since we last had the opportunity to appear before the public accounts committee and the first time since the committee was established. We are grateful for the opportunity to meet the committee today and it has asked us here to discuss our financial statements 2024. To start, we would like to give the committee a broader update on our work in 2024, which marked ten years since the establishment of the agency. In the 11 years since its establishment, the agency has grown significantly, with a 100% increase in child protection and welfare referrals. In 2024, we received 96,666 child protection and welfare referrals. There have been 5,823 young people in our foster care, residential aftercare services. Some 20,839 children were open to social workers. A total of 48,443 young people received a family support service and 8,659 young people were referred to our education support services for that school year.

In recent years, we have also expanded our services and implemented new services in line with changing policy and legislation, such as the birth information and tracing service and the childminding registration service. We have rapidly scaled up services to respond to an almost 500% increase in separated children seeking international protection, with 893 of these young people being accommodated or in the care of Tusla at the end of 2024.

Many of the challenges we are facing as an agency have been widely documented and we have been transparent in discussing the increasing demand for all of our services in the numbers referred and the number of children and young people with more complex needs who also require access to other specialist services, such as disability, mental health and addiction services, to meet their needs. We have publicly acknowledged the challenges we face in respect of an inadequate supply of registered and regulated emergency and mainstream residential placements, primarily due to property and workforce supply challenges. That is also a result of the complex needs and often challenging behaviour of a cohort of young people in our care, in particular those aged 16 to 18 years engaged in substance misuse or criminal activity or those with significant mental health issues.

Wider societal issues, such as global movement, poverty, homelessness, domestic and gender-based violence, drugs, criminality and exploitation, significantly impact the demand for services.

We continue to engage with other State agencies to promote interagency working to better meet the needs of these young people and their parents, who may also require intervention, particularly in relation to mental health and substance misuse.

We are also challenged in providing timely access to special care beds for the most vulnerable young people in our care due to staffing issues and inadequate step-down or onward placement for young people with complex needs to enable their timely discharge from special care. As a result, we have experienced increased scrutiny and criticism from the Judiciary on the impact of our capacity challenges on children and young people in the care of the State and under the oversight of the courts. We look forward to the review of the Child Care Act and the commitment to place interagency co-operation on a statutory basis and we welcome the commitment in the programme for Government to whole-of-government support for the delivery of alternative care services. Further strengthening of interagency working and the support of cross-Government Departments is pivotal to better outcomes for children and young people with complex needs.

It is important to recognise the significant improvements made by the agency since we were last before the committee through the implementation of our reform programme. The objective of this transformation programme across five key pillars is to ensure young people receive the right service from the right professional in the right place at the right time. Over the past 18 months, with the support of staff, executive board, departmental colleagues and Ministers, we have made significant progress. We have opened the first of five Tusla residential services since 2018 and plan to open a further 11 centres in 2025 and 2026. We have increased the number of Tusla foster carers recruited and are almost at our funded workforce, with the most social workers and social care workers ever employed in the agency. We have increased our staff retention to 93%. We have launched new supply routes for social work and social care professionals in the agency, most significantly a new social work apprenticeship scheme with 110 social work apprentices commenced since 2024 and an additional 100 places planned for September 2026. We have achieved statutory compliance with birth information and tracing legislation and successfully launched the childminding registration service across Ireland. We have made significant technological advances with the first digital integrated child record - one record, one child - developed in-house and under budget. We have published the first Tusla outcomes framework.

We are preparing for the launch on 1 January 2026 of the final phase of the transformation of our community services, restructuring our regions, areas and services to ensure equity of access, integrated service delivery, more focused governance and oversight, and more efficient services.

The agency in 2025 has an overall budget of €1.2 billion, representing a €141 million increase on 2024. This allocation reflects €75.2 million for mainstream costs, €57.5 million for separated children seeking international protection and €8.3 million for other services, including our Tusla educational support services. Additionally, we were allocated €34.2 million in respect of Ukraine costs.

While 99% of Tusla procurement spend was compliant in 2024, a concern of the executive and the committee has been to address the remaining non-compliant expenditure. We have taken significant actions in 2025 to address this, with in excess of €3 million of the €5.4 million in non-compliant contracts being procured.

Together, we have made progress. We received additional investment in 2024 and 2025 to meet new and existing demand and we know from external oversight that we are using our resources to ensure those most at risk or in need are responded to. However, significant challenges remain. When I appeared before the committee in February 2024, I noted our anticipation that service demand and complexity would increase. I stated that additional investment in capital and revenue would be needed to keep up with that pace. Today, I can say our anticipation has been realised. While we have driven savings and efficiencies, including a €30 million saving on emergency and mainstream placements in 2024, and increased productivity, we require additional investment in the 2026 budget allocation in our child protection and welfare services, therapeutic services, alternative care services, educational support and early intervention, and better interagency support to meet the increasing complexity of cases.

The work we do is one of the most important roles in the State and it is a privilege for us to work for this agency. We are extremely proud of our staff, who work tirelessly each day, and of our partners in community and voluntary services across the country, supporting children, young people, families and communities on our behalf.

I am happy to answer any questions.