Mr. Bernard Gloster:

I am certainly anxious to look at that. I recall that some months ago a social media post or mainstream media made reference to that issue of social workers not giving email addresses. I did go looking to try to establish what was behind that and I genuinely could not land on it. Every staff member of Tusla has an email address and every staff member who deals with the public would be obliged to provide that email address to the people they are dealing with so they can contact them and communicate with them. There may be a small number of situations in which, for personal safety and security reasons, that may not be possible.

With regard to the mobile phone numbers, the mobile phone numbers and the contact numbers for the duty teams are all available on the website in terms of the landline. The mobile numbers are more for emergency work and for work between the worker and the office. They do give their mobile numbers to service users with whom they may be dealing, and the aftercare workers give their number to the young adults they work with. It is not the case, however, that we could have every Tusla child protection social worker's mobile phone number generally available in the public domain. The demand would be significant. I refer back to my opening statement also. It is important to say I have increasing evidence to be seriously concerned for the safety and welfare of my staff in certain contexts.