Mr. Noel Kelly:

We have 89 educational welfare officers and six of those are proficient in Irish. We also have line management responsibility for the home school community liaison scheme. There are 460 home school community liaison co-ordinators nationally. More than 270 of those are based in primary schools and are qualified primary teachers with a proficiency in Irish. While they are not direct employees of Tusla, that is a resource that is available to us as well. Our service development and delivery at the moment is all about integration. We have integrated those services together within Tusla and we are working very closely with our colleagues on this. That is a resource that is available. Colleagues in other services, if they need to, have access to talk to our colleagues. In particular in relation to children in schools, we have a home school liaison teacher on hand who is available to the parents and to the child. That is another support that we are using more and that we need to capitalise on further.

Unfortunately, but fortunately as well, the remit of the home school liaison scheme did not cover early years services, but we have a new circular in development with the Department of Education and Skills which will be putting an emphasis on involvement in early years services. That is something that we should be able to offer as a support to our colleagues, that is, where necessary or possible, the home school liaison teacher could provide support and interpretation as Gaeilge.