Denise Mitchell (Dublin Bay North, Sinn Fein)
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I will be brief as I have to go to the Chamber. I thank the representatives for attending. We all acknowledge the steps Tusla has taken to recruit staff, but none of us here is shocked as we have been raising these questions regarding staff numbers constantly with the Minister. How big is the problem in attracting staff? How hard is it to get staff into the agency? Deputy Chambers touched on this briefly but is there a need for more administrative staff? I do not know if the agency gave a commitment to start recruiting administrative staff. The biggest workload for social workers is administration. Looking at this HIQA report it appears that we are back to square one with bad record keeping. There appears to be a pattern here so perhaps the witnesses will address the question of how big an issue is staffing. They should be honest and up-front about it.

I also wish to refer to training. HIQA said in its report that it did not find any strong evidence of effective staff training and development. That is alarming. Has a review of the skills sets of staff in Tusla been undertaken to date? What opportunities for upskilling are available to staff members? What training is planned to ensure that members of staff are adequately equipped to use the new NCCIS which is due to be rolled out in July?