Mr. Pat Rabbitte:

I did not deal with Deputy Rabbitte's question about priorities. I will come back to it.

I have been looking at the question of an Oireachtas helpline in the context of a different aspect of the matter, which is answers to parliamentary questions. It is a very difficult area. The Minister is very exercised by this issue as well. I have had discussions with her about it. The report I have received on it suggests to me that there are inadequate resources devoted to this area. It is very important for the public to have confidence in Tusla. The people with whom I interact in this role are professionals who are really dedicated to doing their jobs. In my observation, they do not really engage very much with the outside world. I think we need to look at that. The business of answering parliamentary questions can be quite tricky because there is a very restricted space between when the questions come to us and when the answers need to be back with the Minister in time for her to prepare to go into the House. If the question is tricky - it is clear that many Deputies will not submit a question unless it is tricky - it can be very difficult to get in touch with the key hands-on person to source the information. I think we can improve the process. I think we need to improve it. I take the Chairman's general point about an Oireachtas helpline. We need to look at resources in this context.

We need to look at the possibility of a spokesperson for the agency. If one looks at many other bodies, one will find that they all have people, whom any member of this committee could name off the top of his or her head, who communicate to the Oireachtas and the world at large and who speak on radio and television about their areas of responsibility. We badly need such a person. It would be a shame if there were members of the public whose only knowledge of Tusla was the Maurice McCabe affair that was mentioned by the Chairman. Many good things are happening in Tusla, but we are not putting them out there. I agree with the Chairman that egregious errors were made in the Maurice McCabe situation. In my observation, Tusla as an organisation was entirely too defensive in the way it responded to it. I recently received a letter from the Charleton tribunal clarifying the point that Mr. Justice Charleton did not indict the agency. He indicted the local management and the local people concerned with the Cavan-Monaghan situation. That clarification was welcome. Nonetheless, I would say that in my observation, it unnecessarily convulsed the organisation. It was overly defensive about it. What happened should not have happened under any set of circumstances. We all make mistakes. When it happened, people should have come out and simply told the truth.

Obviously, the HIQA report referred to by the Chairman is to the centre and front in the tasks we now face. To go back to Deputy Rabbitte's question, one of my priorities for the agency is to continue to implement the recommendations of the HIQA report, insofar as resources permit. Good progress is being made. As the Chairman knows, the Minister has established an expert assurance group to ride shotgun on the implementation of those recommendations. There is regular engagement in that regard. In fact, I am meeting the chairman of the expert assurance group on Monday. Progress is being made. In some areas, we are back to the question of resources and priorities. If the members of this committee were confronted with a situation in which a choice had to be made about the protection and welfare of the children of today, as compared to historical or retrospective cases of many years ago, I think most of them would decide that we must firstly ensure no child today is at risk without an effective and immediate response from Tusla. One of HIQA's conclusions that seldom makes the headlines is that regardless of the deficiencies it highlights, it always points out that there has never been a risk to a child which has not received an immediate response from Tusla. That is very important. HIQA is very important in terms of driving standards and so on. By definition, it often engages in a fault-finding exercise.

We should remember, as Deputy Rabbitte said, that it is not very many years ago that we attached a very low importance to this area. Suddenly, there seems to be a universal expectation that we should be at leading-edge on every aspect of it, some five years after the agency was established. There is need for balance there.

The questions the Chairman raised are part of my priorities. My first priority is to put a chief executive in place. The post, notwithstanding the confidentiality which surrounds it, although I do not see why there is be, is being advertised on 8 March. That is a very important appointment for obvious reasons.

Staff retention and recruitment is a further priority. Continuing to implement the HIQA recommendations is another priority. I talked about improving communications to the public and the political environment and that is another priority. Addressing unallocated cases is a further priority, although not in terms of priority, as these are all matters that have to be progressed in sync. On the question of unallocated cases, it is comforting to be advised that there are not cases, which are not being attended to, piling up somewhere in a cupboard or a filing cabinet, and I have met the local management in Galway, I was in Mullingar last Friday and I have been in other areas. "Unallocated cases" does not mean they have not been screened. If there is any immediate risk to a child, that is attended to. That is important because people have the impression that if it is an unallocated case, it is not getting attention at all, and that it might be substantive and urgent.

In that regard, Deputy Rabbitte's point about whether staff have the tools of the trade to do the job is relevant because until last July, it was a paper-based system. That is a hugely significant point in the world we live in. It accounts for some of the criticisms of HIQA about discrepancies or inconsistencies in practice between different parts of the country and so on. I am advised that that IT system is working very well and is greeted with positivity by the staff also.