Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Ms Duggan for that reply. I want to move on to social workers. I acknowledge what she said about vacancies and the unfortunate decrease in staff numbers. There is a challenge across the public sector attracting staff. Tusla seems to have a problem retaining staff, in particular in this field. I have no doubt that some of the cases that individuals in Tusla deal with are very challenging. I would be the first to say that. However, we were told about 1,669 social workers in 2021 and 1,612 in 2022. What is the figure for 2023?