Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 2 October 2025

Public Accounts Committee

Financial Statements 2024: Tusla - the Child and Family Agency

2:00 am

Photo of Aidan FarrellyAidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Okay. For example, if 10% of those 42,000 children were flagged and Tusla said there was an issue, how would the agency have coped in 2024, if it had received 4,000 referrals, creating a whole new level of workload? Is Tusla ready, like its chair says? Is it resourced to the extent it needs to be to do this work? My concern is that these checks will potentially be an administrative exercise only. That is not a slight on Tusla staff at all. Are the resources there to follow through on the potential child protection concerns or welfare issues that might come from those checks?