Mr. Bernard Gloster:

-----because I would want to talk to the professional staff about it. Unfortunately, just as there are legitimate views and questions about that for many people, I would equally have to say I am concerned if there is a small prevalence on social media, which is quite inappropriate in some of its commentary on that. I want to be balanced about that but it is a fair question. I am interested in the matter of prevention and the family support service. Three weeks ago, I said to the organisation in clear terms we have a whole amount of change programmes ongoing, some of which we cannot stop as we have to attend to them and some of which we need to slow down. I have said we have four priority programmes I want achieved and two of them are, on the left-hand side, the child protection and welfare strategy, which is off the back of the HIQA report of 2018, and on the right-hand side, prevention and the family support service. I have said I no longer want those to be seen as two programmes in Tusla but for them to be fully integrated where the majority of children can step down from the child protection system once there is a safety plan and they can be supported in the family support service. Some good work is being done around that and I will make sure we send the committee details on that.

On the school completion programme coming under the jurisdiction or employment of education and training boards, ETBs, that would genuinely be entirely a matter of public service determination of employees. As the Deputy knows, that is the sole remit of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. I have heard some of the arguments about it and I am interested in exploring them more to see what better level of stability can be achieved to give the certainty the Deputy is talking about. That is something I would need to come back to the Deputy about to give her more detail on the back story. I am not fully au faitwith the number of school completion programme staff who are in that space versus the number who are not. I have heard of it as an issue and I will certainly look into it and come back to the Deputy. It is not necessarily within the gift of Tusla to make a determination that a person-----