Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

That is very good. It reinforces the point about the power of education. The key point is Tusla is empowering and enabling the Travelling community. It is not about handing out supports but about enabling members of the community to improve their own position in society. You cannot beat the power of enabling people to be able to do that themselves. I commend the agency on that work. It is great to see it scaling up and being modified to try to be as effective as possible. Bringing in members of the community to work with the community as a whole is very important.

My final point is on Tusla's budget. It has come across that there is a need for probably greater certainty, regularity and consistency in the funding so the agency can plan. That is critically important and a message we need to take back as a committee. There is great work being done but if Tusla is relying on ad hoc funding and various initiatives that is not good enough for it as an organisation in terms of its work programme, trying to plan for the future and trying to continually improve what it does. That is certainly something we need to take back. I thank the officials.