Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)

I appreciate that. The Department really does need to work in a very supportive and collaborative way with Tusla.

The burden of the work Tusla has unbelievably broad. The children it deals with are at risk and very vulnerable and it is very important that the Department and the State agency tasked with this very serious responsibility work in concert. A large number of data breaches have been reported since 2019. We have all sent a text or email to the wrong person but some other breaches that have been reported by Tusla are incredibly serious, such as communications going to alleged abusers letting them know where women and children fleeing their abuse are being accommodated, and an unqualified individual pretending to be a social care worker accessing a residential care unit and spending the night there with vulnerable children. We have seen a large number of incidents reported to the data protection commissioner as well as penalties and personal damages. Can Ms Duggan tell us how many incidents there have been since 2019? The information I have only goes up to 2023 but data protection incidents have to be reported within a very tight timeline. I assume Tusla has records of incidents that occurred in 2024 and even for the first six months of this year,