Mr. Pat Smyth:

That is an important point. As I said earlier, the fundamental value of how we operate is to try to ensure that every child in Ireland who needs the services of Tusla and those safeguarding protections to be in place has them. When any of us look back at whether we did right or wrong, it will be viewed in the context of whether we did enough for those who needed us. The underlying challenge behind that is that this is a difficult area of business. The establishment of Tusla was a very strong statement by the State that it took this area seriously. Today, we are challenged by the failures of years of neglect of child protection and welfare systems in the State. We are all citizens of the State, so we all have to take some responsibility for that. I think we are in an era where we as citizens and the wider public demand very high standards of child protection. We in Ireland have had incredibly difficult episodes relating to the failures of that in the past.

Tusla tries to carry out the State's desire to ensure that those services are sufficient and good enough as we move forward. It will take us a number of years to get to a place where that is sufficient. Last time we were here, we talked about the difficulties with regard to resources and the key professionals, which is to say social workers, and their availability. That is an ongoing challenge which we are faced with trying to improve and make changes around. All this means that the responsibility for protection is down to every one of us as citizens and parents. I do not think we can easily overcome the fact that there are doubters but the value of this organisation is to try to do our best for the children of today.