Ms Kate Duggan:

I thank the Chair and the committee for the invitation to appear before it today. I am joined here today by my colleagues Mr. Pat Smyth, national director of finance and corporate services, Ms Clare Murphy, national director of services and integration, interim, and Rosarii Mannion, national director of people and change. It has been 18 months since we last had the opportunity to meet the committee and we are grateful once again for the opportunity to be here today. We have been asked here to discuss Tusla’s financial statement for 2022 and parenting programmes. However, in advance of these items, we would like to give a broader update on our work today in 2024, an important year, as we reflect on ten years since the establishment of the agency in 2014.

Over the past ten years, the agency has grown significantly, with a 100% increase in child protection and welfare referrals. We have expanded our preventative family support and educational support work and implemented new services in line with changing policy and legislation, such as the birth information and tracing service. We have developed innovative programmes to meet emerging challenges, such as Covid-19 and the HSE cyber attack, and significantly scaled services to respond to a 500% increase in separated children seeking international protection-unaccompanied minors as result of the war in Ukraine and wider global movement.

Throughout this period, our corporate functions have also matured and developed and we have significantly increased our levels of legal and regulatory compliances. We are grateful for the increasing investment in our services over this period, to an overall budget in 2024 of €1.1 billion, with 75% of that budget allocated to placements, grants and commissioned community and voluntary services. We are proud of the agency’s achievements to date and of the positive work we have done with children, families and communities all over Ireland. However, we remain concerned regarding the core challenges we face, namely, an annual increase in referrals and the changing complexity of many of these referrals; the issues we have around placement capacity in foster care, residential care, aftercare, emergency care, and special care; the recruitment and retention of social workers and social care workers; and the increasing demand across all our community services.

Over the past 18 months, through our alternative care strategies, we have scaled up significantly with the provision of an additional 131 extra beds and the purchase of nine properties. However, as a result of the ever-increasing demand which I have set out, we remain challenged to source appropriate placements for children and young people, particularly those with complex presentations or in an emergency. One area of particular focus for us currently is that of special emergency arrangements, SEAs. Where a shortfall in capacity means a regulated emergency placement or a placement in a statutory, community and voluntary or private care service - either foster care or residential care - is not available, a special emergency arrangement is required to ensure an immediate place of safety for a young person. These are unregulated placements, mostly in rented accommodation, apartments and houses, with staffing from third party providers. While these account for a very small number of the totality of the children in our care, the oversight of SEAs and the provision of additional registered and regulated placements is a priority for Tusla at all levels in the agency, our board and Department.

As many commentators have already observed in the past year, Tusla cannot solve all these challenges alone. Significant interagency and cross governmental co-operation is required to ensure we are meeting the needs of children and young people. We particularly welcome two developments in recent weeks. First, the establishment by the Minister, Deputy O’Gorman, of an interagency group on an administrative basis to oversee an interagency and cross-governmental response to children known to us or in the care of Tusla. Second, the joint commitment articulated by me as CEO of Tusla, and the CEO of the HSE, to the full implementation of the joint protocol for children with complex needs, specifically, that disagreement over resource allocation would not prohibit child centred decisions.

As we look ahead, our reform programme continues at pace, and our Corporate Plan 2024-2026 outlines a comprehensive roadmap to the ongoing implementation of this reform to ensure efficiency, equity and consistency in the services we provide. It also ensures that children, families, and individuals receive the right service at the right time, that our staff feel supported and valued, and that we are a trusted and respected public service. We anticipate that service demand and complexity will increase and additional investment in capital and revenue will be required in the coming years to keep pace with this demand. We look forward to further strengthening interagency work with the support of cross-government Departments to better meet the needs of children and young people in our care with more complex needs, particularly those with disability, mental health, addiction, or involvement with the youth justice system.

I thank the committee members for their time and I am happy to answer any questions they may have.