Mr. Bernard Gloster:

To avoid any doubt, if somebody checks what I said a number of years ago on Google, I was the person who told the "Six One" news programme that I was not necessarily convinced that taking children and family services out of the health system would make it any better. Many good things have been done since Tusla was established and I have no doubt there have been benefits. Unfortunately, the expectation created when the agency was established in the public domain was essentially that it would be a panacea and it would solve all the State's challenges in the range of services, including child protection, children in care, adoption, fostering and so on. Establishing public organisations and entities rarely amounts to a panacea. When a separate organisation is established, as I referenced earlier, one must rebuild a centre with GDPR, information and communications development, legal services, finance, functions of human resources and so on. It becomes a very costly exercise but in the public domain it can have the perception of being a very top-heavy administrative centre. The expectation when Tusla was set up was probably overstated.

Is Tusla adequately equipped to meet its statutory remit today? It has much going for it but for a long time to come it will experience pressure both from complexity and volume of demand. There are people waiting for an information and tracing service in adoption but there are also people waiting for other services we provide. When people are waiting, the question must be asked if the required capacity is there. Tusla has a much better capacity today than it did and since 2016 there has been substantial investment in it. It is better but it is not perfect, no more than it is with a hospital waiting list, for example.