Mr. Bernard Cantillon:

Occasionally, something terrible will happen to somebody who has had an experience with the HSE and members of the public become aware of it. The reason people rarely post on online forums or other social media that they want the HSE abolished is that they see value in other areas of the organisation. They have had interactions with the HSE and are familiar with it. Most people have been to a hospital, visited a general practitioner or attended a consultant at some point in their lives. Tusla is, however, a bit of an unknown. Most people who have had a positive experience with Tusla do not broadcast it to their neighbours. That is understandable because people do not want to admit that there was a problem which caused Tusla to be involved in their lives. Often, people will view Tusla as a distant body which is engaged in something a little bit nefarious because they do not know what it is doing and they are not really sure what the role of a social worker is. There is a gap. Tusla does not provide much information, although, to be fair, it tries to tell the public what it does.

When a scandal breaks, because the issues usually pertain to an individual, the standard response from Tusla tends to be that it cannot comment on individual cases. Many workers find that response dispiriting because the public is enraged about the matter but nobody seems to say this is the reason that the social workers in that case had to act in that manner. It is not really explained to the public that it can be difficult.