Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 27 November 2025
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Children and Equality
Child Protection Matters and Special Emergency Accommodation: Discussion
2:00 am
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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From Tusla, the Child and Family Agency, I welcome Ms Kate Duggan, chief executive officer, Mr. Gerry Hone, national director of services and integration, Ms Rosarii Mannion, national director of people and change, Mr. Pat Smyth, national director of finance and corporate services, Ms Lorna Kavanagh, interim service director with responsibility for separated children seeking international protection services, and Mr. Diego Gallagher, senior solicitor with the office of legal services. I thank the witnesses for taking the time to be here.
The purpose of this meeting is to discuss with Tusla policies on child protection matters and the use of special emergency accommodation. We can all agree that the background to this meeting is the result of information of very serious child protection incidents in recent times coming into the public domain. While we are not here to discuss individual cases, it is of the utmost importance that the committee delivers on its oversight function in relation to ensuring that there are robust policies in place when it comes to the protection of children. I intend to ensure that we have an informative engagement. I also intend to ensure that we do not prejudice any ongoing criminal investigations or future criminal proceedings.
Before we begin, I have a few housekeeping matters to go through. I wish to advise everyone that the chat function on MS Teams should only be used to make the team on site aware of any technical issues or urgent matters that may arise. It should not be used to make general comments or statements during the meeting.
I remind members of the constitutional requirement that they must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex to participate in public meetings. I will not permit a member to participate if he or she is not adhering to that constitutional requirement. Therefore, any member who attempts to participate from outside the precincts will be asked to leave the meeting. In this regard, I ask any member participating via MS Teams to confirm, prior to making their contribution, that they are on the grounds of the Leinster House campus.
In advance of inviting our witnesses to deliver their opening statements, I advise them that they are protected by absolute privilege in respect of their presentations to the committee. This means they have an absolute defence against any defamation action relating to anything they say at the meeting. However, they are expected not to abuse this privilege, and it is my duty as Cathaoirleach to ensure it is not abused. Therefore, if witnesses' statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.
Ms Duggan has five minutes of speaking time in which to deliver her opening statement. It will be followed by a question-and-answer session with our members. I invite Ms Duggan to deliver her opening statement.
Ms Kate Duggan:
I thank the Chair and other committee members for the invitation to appear before them today. I am joined here by my colleagues Gerry Hone, national director of services and integration, Rosarii Mannion, national director of people and change, Pat Smyth, national director of finance and corporate services, Lorna Kavanagh, service director with responsibility for separated children, and Diego Gallagher, senior solicitor. We are grateful for the opportunity to meet members today to discuss our work, the progress made and the challenges we continue to face. When we appeared before them in July this year, I highlighted the growth in demand for our services, with a 100% increase in child protection and welfare referrals since the agency was established in 2014. For the first nine months of this year, up to the end of September 2025, the agency has received 78,588 referrals, an increase of 11% since the same time last year, and we forecast that this number will be in the order of 105,000 by the end of the year. There are 5,866 young people in our foster care and residential care services and 2,972 young people receiving aftercare services. For the academic year 2024–25, there were 9,293 referrals to our Tusla educational support service, a 16% increase on the previous academic year.
We are proud of the agency’s achievements to date and of the positive work our staff continue to do every day with children, families and communities all over Ireland, often in difficult situations and in response to a changing level of need. It is a positive reflection of the work we do that nine out of ten young people living in foster care and residential care are engaged in education and that three in four young people who leave our care and transition to aftercare services are in education and training. This has been evidenced in the CSO frontier series report.
However, as CEO I assure members that we are acutely aware of the challenges we face and the impact of these on the lives of young people in our care or living in the community and in need of our support. These challenges have been widely articulated by me as CEO, my colleagues, regulators and advocacy groups, and have been publicly documented. Our inability to respond to some young people in the way that we would want is of great concern to me, our board and our staff.
At the core of this, we are challenged by workforce supply issues, particularly in social work and social care, leading to a number of unallocated cases in our community services and capacity challenges in our residential and special care services. Wider societal issues such as global movement, poverty, homelessness, domestic, sexual and gender-based violence, drugs, criminality and exploitation, and social media continue to significantly impact the lives of children, young people and families and the subsequent demand for our services. Some of these issues have led to an increase in the number of young people with more complex needs, such as disabilities and mental health issues, and those with much more challenging behaviours, particularly young people aged between 16 and 18 engaged in substance misuse or criminal activity or at risk of, or subject to, criminal or sexual exploitation.
The requirement to significantly scale our separated children seeking international protection services has placed a significant pressure on the agency. We are responding to a 500% increase in unaccompanied minors coming to Ireland since 2022. This demand is continuing to grow, resulting in significant strain in both property and workforce supply across the country. There are approximately 550 unaccompanied minors currently in care or being accommodated by Tusla. We continue to engage with the Department of justice in relation to the implementation of the EU migration pact, with particular focus on proposed revised processes for age assessment and the establishment of a representative service for unaccompanied minors.
Our workforce supply issues, the availability of registered providers and the capacity within the property market create a challenge for us to place all young people in a registered placement. Where a registered placement or a placement in statutory, community and voluntary, or private care services is not available, a special emergency arrangement is required to ensure an immediate place of safety for a young person. On 16 November 2025, there were 58 young people from our mainstream services in special emergency arrangements and 105 unaccompanied minors placed in special emergency arrangements.
I would like to outline briefly to the committee some of the actions we have taken and are taking to address the challenges I have just referred to. These are being addressed through our integrated reform programme, currently being implemented across the agency to ensure that children and young people receive the right response from the right professional, in the right place and at the right time, and that our staff are supported and valued. Over the last 18 months, with the support of our staff, executive, board, Department colleagues and Ministers, we have made significant progress. We are in the final stages of planning for the implementation of a new operating model in our community services. From 1 January 2026, there will be a single point of access to Tusla services, with a single child record in every Tusla network across Ireland and with multidisciplinary teams in place to respond in a more integrated way to the needs of children and families. This will mean families or those making a referral will no longer be told they do not meet the threshold for child protection services. Instead, they will be allocated to a family support or early intervention team, and if their needs change they will be responded to by the most appropriate team in a seamless way. This will ensure more efficient use of resources and, more importantly, that children and families will experience more positive outcomes.
From a workforce perspective, our challenge from 2014 to 2023 was the inadequate number of social work and social care staff graduating from our third level sector, with approximately 220 social work graduates each year. Through the work of our executive management team, led by our director of people and change and with the support of our colleagues in the Department of Children, Disability and Equality, CORU and University College Cork, we launched a social work apprenticeship scheme. With the support of the Minister for children, we have received funding for 36 apprenticeship places in 2024, 77 in 2025 and 100 in 2026. This year, we have also commenced a work-based learning programme for social care in partnership with Munster Technological University, with 17 participants.
The impact of these efforts is that we now have 1,730 social work staff and 1,524 social care staff employed in the agency, representing the highest staffing levels to date, but we estimate that approximately 400 additional front-line staff are required to meet the presenting demand.
Importantly, we have also received much-needed investment over the past three years in our residential service provision. We are starting to see the impact of that investment, with the opening of our first four residential centres since 2018. We are on track to open a further eight across 2026. Opening such facilities at a standard that meets our regulatory requirements takes 12 to 18 months from the point of purchase.
In 2024, we commissioned an external review of special care, and we are working to implement the 30 recommendations from that review. We welcome the sanctioning of a new special care worker grade by the Department of Children, Disability and Equality and the Department of public expenditure and reform in an effort to increase our special care capacity.
In respect of the use of special emergency arrangements, we have reduced the costs and strengthened the governance and oversight. We continue to make every effort to increase the capacity of our registered emergency residential care and to establish registered emergency intake units for unaccompanied minors. Where young persons are placed in a special emergency arrangement, every effort is made to move them to registered settings as soon as possible.
Keeping children safe from harm is our key priority. Under the Children First Act, all in society have a role to play in keeping children safe from harm. While we are focused on our statutory responsibilities, we continue to engage at a senior level with other State agencies to strengthen interagency working to ensure families are supported and children are safeguarded and protected. We welcome the review of the Child Care Act, the commitment to place interagency co-operation on a statutory basis and the commitment in the programme for Government to whole-of-government support for the delivery of alternative care services.
Further strengthening of interagency working, and the support of cross-Government Departments, is pivotal to protecting the most vulnerable children and families and enabling better outcomes for children and young people with more complex needs.
I also want to address the recent tragic and significant incidents involving four young people known to our services. As CEO, I understand the concerns of the wider public and I recognise the impact this has had on families, communities and our staff. While I cannot comment on the specifics of these cases, as there are ongoing investigations by An Garda Síochána, I assure members that we are working with An Garda Síochána on these investigations and all of the cases are being reviewed by the national review panel. In the context of the timeline of two of the cases, the Minister for children has also initiated a welfare check of all cases closed to child protection and welfare services during Covid-19 between 1 March 2020 and 28 February 2022 and this process has commenced.
I believe that the work we do is one of the most important roles in the State, and it is a privilege for us to work for this agency. We are extremely proud of our staff, who work tirelessly every day in supporting children, families and communities on our behalf.
I thank the committee for its commitment and advocacy for the most vulnerable children and young people. I look forward to working with it further over the coming months.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I thank Ms Duggan very much. Is it agreed that we publish the opening statement to the Oireachtas website? Agreed.
Before I call members, I advise them that they are being allocated seven minutes speaking time. This allocation must include the response from the witnesses. I will allow a second round of questions if time permits. When putting their questions, I ask members to strictly adhere to the agenda topic under consideration at this meeting.
I will now call the members in accordance with the speaking rota circulated. I do not think we have any members on MS Teams, so we will move on. I will start with Deputy Boland.
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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The witnesses are all very welcome today. I agree with Ms Duggan that the work Tusla does is one of the most important services that we provide to the most vulnerable children in society. I thank her and all in Tusla for the work they do. I see my role as trying to support that, but obviously when Tusla comes before the committee, we are going to highlight some of the issues.
I want to start with the Tusla residential centres. It is great news that it is looking to open eight centres in 2026. How many places would that provide?
Ms Kate Duggan:
On average, a centre would accommodate four young people, so eight centres would provide places for 32 young people. One of the challenges we currently face is when we are trying to place young people with more complex needs, either for their protection or for the protection of other children who reside in a centre. We must remember that, for these young people, that is their home. At times, either due to the complexity of need or maybe due to a court direction on a particular young person, that unit may not be at full occupancy. We currently work to about 99% bed occupancy levels at night, but that is not to say there may be only three young people placed in a unit, because that is in the best interests of those three young people. On average, we have four, but it varies depending on the needs of the young people.
When we talk about special emergency arrangements, what we see is that there is a cohort of young people who need to be placed in a single-occupancy placement because of their level of dysregulation - this is often because they come to us at a later stage when they may not have received the earlier intervention and therapeutic services they needed growing up - or because they are engaged in very high levels of violence, harassment or aggression. What we have worked very hard to achieve is to make sure that the costs of a single-occupancy special emergency arrangement is in line with or less than a registered centre's. It is primarily based on the needs of the young people.
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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How does it work in terms of getting the therapies for a child in the example Ms Duggan has just given?
Ms Kate Duggan:
More generally for any child, their first interaction with any service is usually the public health nurse in the Health Service Executive around their developmental checks. From there, it is a case of identifying any access they might need to primary care services, whether that is speech and language therapy, occupational therapy or psychology. For those with disabilities, it is through the children's disability network teams within the HSE. For those with mental health issues, it is through child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS. The waiting lists for those services are well documented.
We also have young people in our care who have been subject to abuse, whether that is emotional, physical or sexual abuse, or neglect. What we see is that we are coming across young people aged 16 to 18 in particular who are coming in touch with the care system for the first time and who have quite complex and challenging behaviours. There may often have been periods of not receiving appropriate intervention and therapeutic supports or perhaps their family or parents may have mental health issues or are engaged in addiction services and were not able to engage with or did not have access to appropriate services. We are seeing a group of young people with much more complex profiles than perhaps previously.
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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When a child is placed in the hands of Tusla or, in particular, in foster care or residential care, does Tusla take on the role of trying to get access to those therapies?
Ms Kate Duggan:
There are two things. First of all, we would advocate. We are now the corporate parent, and the same as any parent we would advocate for access to CAMHS services and disability services where they are required. We also have our own assessment, consultation and therapy service, ACTS, team, which is a therapeutic team that works with children who are in or are transitioning from special care. Our ACTS teams also support the young people who are in Oberstown. We do have therapeutic intervention at that level. What I am talking about is where earlier therapeutic intervention and services were needed. In 2023, we established for the first time six Tusla therapeutic teams. What we wanted, and what our ambition was, was for any child coming into the care of Tusla for the first time to have access to a full multidisciplinary assessment with speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, and psychology to inform their care plan. We receive funding for those six teams and they are in place. Our ambition is to try to roll out and expand the provision of those teams across services. That does not replace specialist disability or mental health services. It is a developmental approach to make sure that the care plan is best informed.
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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Are those six teams fully recruited and resourced?
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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That is really good news. Looking forward to the eight centres in 2026, how many does Ms Duggan project we will need in 2027 and 2028?
Ms Kate Duggan:
We also spend about €8 million buying in private therapy, the same as a parent would try to source private therapy for their child. Where we cannot get access to therapy within the public system, we seek to purchase it for children as part of their care plans.
We estimate that, within our mainstream services, we need about 200 extra residential beds. At the moment, we have about 233 young people waiting for access to residential beds. They include the young people who are currently in a special emergency arrangement.
There are probably two challenges that we all share. When we wrote our alternative care residential plan about three years ago, we identified the need for 110 extra beds. What we probably did not predict at that time were three things. The first is the increasing number of young people presenting, in particular between the ages of 16 and 18, who are not able to live in a home with other children. The second is that we had thought the community and voluntary sector would be able to scale their services more, but they are challenged, particularly in terms of capital. They are also challenged in terms of recruitment. The third thing that we never foresaw three years ago was the scale of the rise in separated children seeking international protection. What we are seeing-----
Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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I have got 15 seconds. I will ask a quick question. I know age verification is a real challenge for Tusla. Is there any international best practice or have any countries come up with any innovative ways for age verification? I know it is a real challenge and it is putting pressure on.
Ms Lorna Kavanagh:
In terms of international best practice standards, it is all set out in the European Asylum Support Office, EASO, guidelines on conducting age assessment. For our own process, which is an eligibility for services assessment, we largely drew from those practice guidelines. We are one of the few countries in Europe that has an assessment based on psychosocial presentation, so it is an interview that is undertaken with a child across a number of psychosocial categories. We take a full social history of the young person to determine if they are eligible. With the pact on migration coming in June, the Department of justice and ourselves are going to work closely to get their systems up and running so that they can do the formal age assessment.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I am sure we can come back to these questions in the second round, if needed.
Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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I thank all for being here. I acknowledge the vast majority of people in Tusla, particularly the social workers on the ground, who do so much good work. I often think of them and how hard it is for them when we hear stories in the media. It is important to acknowledge them here.
I will turn to the recent HIQA report on Dublin north city. I was concerned in reading the child protection issues raised in this report, given this is a regulated setting, which makes you wonder what happens in settings that are not regulated. It is important to note some of the points made in this report. The review of case files showed, overall, that child protection welfare services provided to children were not safe, adequate or timely. For some children, over six months passed before any action was taken with regard to safeguarding risks that had been identified. Others remained allocated to staff who were on extended statutory leave and received no contact from child protection and welfare staff. One example was a non-verbal child with a disability who was awaiting completion of a preliminary inquiry and safety planning for over two months; I have to say it reminded me of the Grace case. Some children were allocated to workers who did not have child protection and welfare training or experience. There was poor governance and oversight of the service at all management levels. It was of significant concern, given the significant risks identified in the April 2024 inspection, that the self-assessment questionnaire returned by the provider in advance of the inspection deemed that the service area was substantially compliant with four capacity and capability standards assessed. Of course, it was found it was not compliant at all. Essentially, it said it was compliant when it was not, which is concerning. Some of the front door referrals were found to be waiting over six months to be screened when Tusla's own requirement is that referrals are screened within 24 hours. This meant that these referrals had not been reviewed by a social worker to determine if the child was at immediate risk of harm and, if needed, immediate safeguarding action was not taken.
This report is really concerning. As I said, this is a regulated environment and the fact HIQA was misled in terms of the self-assessment sent back by the provider stating it was compliant in four of the five areas, when it was not at all, is concerning as well. I know steps have been taken but clearly not quickly enough. I imagine a number of children were failed by the service provided. Can Tusla give us any reassurance in relation to this? As I said, this is just one setting.
That then leads me to the special arrangements. Will the witnesses give us a bit more information on where these settings are and how often they are used? I presume regulation and inspection are non-existent.
Ms Kate Duggan:
I will start off and Mr. Hone might talk to Dublin north city, DNC, in some more detail. It is important to say that we fully accept the findings of the HIQA report. One of the important mechanisms available to us is that external oversight from HIQA. Within the month that the DNC report was published, other reports were published on Donegal and another part of Dublin that indicated these areas were substantially or fully compliant. We absolutely recognise the challenge within the whole of the Dublin north-east region, not just Dublin north city, in terms of resources. What HIQA will talk about is, with the limited resources available, we are responding to those who are at highest risk or greatest need. We have been very open - I certainly have been open - about the fact that we are not getting to all of the children we want to get to in the way we want to get to them. There are a significant number of vacancies in that region.
The report also showed up challenges in relation to governance and oversight, which have been dealt with. I referred in my opening statement to the restructuring and the new changes that are coming in line on 1 January. One of the things that has been historically the case, and is a legacy piece in Tusla, is that the way in which services have been established in terms of the size of those services, and the demand and resources for them, has been very inequitable. From 1 January, the regions are being realigned. New geographical boundaries are coming in and we will end up with six regions with 30 networks of almost equal size in terms of demand and capacity. That will help us to address some of the resourcing issues in place in that area. Mr. Hone will talk about any of the specific findings and what we have done to address those.
Mr. Gerry Hone:
As Ms Duggan pointed out, that particular area is one of the areas that probably has some of the highest needs and highest deprivation in the country. It is one of our largest areas as well. It is around the Dublin area where we struggle most to recruit social workers and social care staff. When you look into the background of this inspection and what was happening in that particular area, the existing staff were extremely busy and dealing with high levels of vacancies. What was missing in that particular system was when people are so busy, governance can slide quite quickly. When we examined externally what was going on, that was what we found. We had to take immediate steps to strengthen governance arrangements within that particular area. The regional chief officer, along with the area managers and principal social workers, PSWs, have been meeting weekly to improve the service in that particular area. We have made great strides in terms of the action plan that was presented to HIQA. We are updating that for HIQA as we speak. The importance of HIQA coming in and examining us externally is that it gives us a great opportunity to improve our services every time and that is followed through.
Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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I will make a point about those at highest risk being dealt with. If the screening has not been done at the front door for six months, you do not know what the level of risk is. There are examples of such children, for instance, a child where there was an allegation of physical abuse who waited for screening for over four weeks. God only knows how that could have escalated and where it would have ended up over four weeks. It is not so much governance, which is of concern, but the children and the suffering they experience when they are not dealt with. I will come back in.
Aisling Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the witnesses for being here. It is greatly appreciated. This is a really important topic, as we all know. I thank my colleagues for their contributions so far.
I read the opening statement, which I know has to be very factual, and there is plenty of information in it, but at the back of all of this are our most vulnerable children. Some of the statements really concern me, such as, "At the core of this, we are challenged by workforce supply issues, particularly in social work and social care, leading to a number of unallocated cases". Obviously, we all know there is a child behind every one of those. What happens to an unallocated case? Will the witnesses give a very broad anonymised example of how serious an unallocated case could be?
Ms Kate Duggan:
Maybe Mr. Hone will give more detail on this but when we talk about an unallocated case, children who are within our child protection and welfare services should have an allocated social worker. When we did not have enough social workers to make sure that all of the children could have an allocated social worker, we worked with HIQA, CORU and different stakeholders to make sure children could be allocated to another case worker, such as a social care worker, under the governance of a social worker. What we know now is, at the moment, about 99% of all of our children in care have an allocated social worker. We also know that for children within community services, overall, 80% have an allocated worker. Where there are 20% of those children who do not have an allocated worker, additional measures of oversight are put in place. For example, a team leader or principal social worker is reviewing that case, and checking to see if there is any change or any new information has come in.
We have made significant improvements to our allocation levels. That is primarily due to the fact that we now have more social workers and social care workers, but we also know that when we talk about unallocated cases these are cases where somebody is concerned about a child's welfare and safety.
Those children are screened and those in most need and at most immediate risk of harm are seen first and allocated first. We would want, and our ambition would be, that 100% of children would be allocated.
Aisling Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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Of course. It is good to hear that 99% of those are allocated.
Aisling Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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Of children in care. For a typical social worker, what is the optimum workload or the optimum number of cases? How many cases are Tusla's social workers having to take on to make sure 99% are covered? If we say that the case is allocated, how much are the social workers actually getting done with those kids? How much time are they able to spend with them and work with them?
Mr. Gerry Hone:
The other important thing to point out is that when we screen a case we prioritise it in terms of whether it is high, medium or low priority. All cases deemed high priority are the first to be allocated within the system. The high risk cases get allocated, and mostly all of the time are allocated to a social worker or another worker.
In terms of commenting on caseloads, we have a caseload management system that gives points for cases in regard to their intensity, and the amount of work that might be involved in those particular cases. Caseloads are then managed in a way that actually takes into account the amount of work entailed with individual cases. That means caseloads can vary, and they can vary anywhere from between five cases up to about 20 cases, depending on the workload of the particular worker. We are very conscious of not giving social workers too much work or social care workers too many cases where the standard of the work is diluted. We have to keep standards up and to make sure the young people are getting the level of support they actually need. Social workers and social care workers out there today are not working on their own with cases. They are co-ordinating services across a range of agencies to make sure those young people are getting the services they actually require.
Aisling Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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Recent and devastating cases that we are all aware of have shocked us so much. Change is obviously needed. More workers are obviously needed in this field. I can imagine that for the people who work for Tusla currently it is quite demoralising, devastating and demotivating to hear some of the narrative that is out there about organisations like Tusla. I am sure that does not help with staff turnover, which I believe is already quite high. We need to address things like that through budgets and extra places in college but what is Tusla doing to tackle staff turnover within its organisation?
Ms Rosarii Mannion:
I thank the Deputy for acknowledging the outstanding staff we have. Our social workers, social care workers and family support therapists on the front line really are second to none. The Deputy is quite right that a lot of the negative commentary in the media and elsewhere does impact morale. It impacts our ability to recruit and retain. Notwithstanding that, last year we conducted an all-staff survey across the agency and we were really pleasantly surprised with the positive disposition that has sustained across our staff. On that survey, we had a 63% response rate. This is not me saying this; it is the voice of our staff. At that time, some 62% of our staff were satisfied; 77% were motivated; 87% felt trusted to do their jobs and, more importantly, 58% are proud to work for Tusla. We would like to see that be a lot higher, obviously. We gave staff the option to select words to describe what Tusla is because the word "culture" can be thrown around and be a nebulous term. Again, six out of ten of the 35,000 positive descriptors were returned. There is so much that is good and so much that is positive for our staff group and we really want to build on that.
As for the Deputy's specific question, what are we doing? We are in the colleges and bringing forward apprenticeships. We have an overseas campaign. We are looking at rotational elements within our staff. We are looking at sponsorships and putting in alternative duties, where if people are doing full-time social work duties they have the option, particularly when getting referrals from occupational health, to look at having less onerous duties for a while. The work is extraordinarily taxing. It is extraordinarily emotionally demanding. There are much easier options out there which is why we are challenged the way we are. I can say, confidently-----
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I thank Ms Mannion. l will come back to that point with the next person. We will now move to Senator Murphy O'Mahony.
Margaret Murphy O'Mahony (Fianna Fail)
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I thank the witnesses for coming today and the work that went into the opening statement. As my colleague said, behind all of the facts and figures we must remember there is a child. I am a great believer that a child should, in ideal circumstances, have a happy, carefree childhood. The worries of the world should be so far away from them. We have to remember the children who this does not happen for, always for reasons out of their control. I will start by saying that.
I note that from January Tusla will implement an operating model with a single point of access and multidisciplinary teams. How do the witnesses envisage measuring the success of that and what difference will it make to the children and their families?
Ms Kate Duggan:
If we think about the way Tusla is set up and structured today, it is currently across 17 areas. Those areas are of different size with different resources available to them. The first thing is that from 1 January those areas will be of equal size and will have resourcing aligned to that in terms of demand. It will bring more equity and standardisation of access across the whole country because that is something we want.
Second, historically in Tusla every referral was assessed through a child protection lens and we know that over 60% of our referrals are actually not a child protection referral. They are a referral for early intervention or family support. Now, under our new model, reporters or referrers, individual parents or self-referrers will be able to come to us and say they would like a family support response or an early intervention response, or they have a child protection concern, or they would like a Meitheal response which is a framework we now have in place where we lead and if there are concerns about a child with more complex needs, we will bring together the school, HSE colleagues and Tusla colleagues to try to come up with an integrated care plan for that child. It now means that at the moment, over 50% of referrals do not meet the threshold for child protection and welfare. There is not a child protection concern but there is a recognition that some support is needed. Those children will now go straight to a family support or early intervention pathway. I have heard from lots of referrers, such as teachers and gardaí, that a referral was made and they got a response to say that it did not meet the threshold for child protection, but then what happens? Now, these children will receive family support or early intervention. We are establishing and standing up 90 family support and early intervention teams across the country. The other big change is that-----
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Could Ms Duggan clarify the number, please?
Ms Kate Duggan:
There will be 90 family support and early intervention teams across the country. Also, where we work in partnership with community and voluntary agencies across the country, today when children are referred out to one of those services for intervention and for support, we often do not know the outcome of that intervention and support, so now there is a whole new way of looking at the services they get, the impact of those services and the outcome of those services. If the children need something different, we will now be able to bring them back in and seamlessly move them through to a child protection response pathway, if that is needed. All of this enables Tusla to have a single child record for the first time. We will have a single digital record of every child, so it means their record from anywhere in the country across any Tusla services is now visible.
Margaret Murphy O'Mahony (Fianna Fail)
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I thank Ms Duggan.
While acknowledging the good work Tusla does, the elephant in the room is recent things that went wrong such as fatal incidents and missing children. Public confidence has been lost. How will Tusla go about getting that back? Has Tusla ever considered an independent external review to see what it comes up with?
Would Tusla commit to doing that and commit to publishing the findings of that external review?
Ms Kate Duggan:
There are two things. One of the challenges that we were very significantly challenged by is our ability to place children in special care when they have a special care order under the High Court and we did not have the capacity. We commissioned an external review to look at that. That had a barrister, a guardian ad litem, GAL, childcare law report - different external people - on that. They have provided that review back to us and there are 30 recommendations, which we are implementing.
We are lucky that we have HIQA as an external regulator. HIQA is in our services almost every day in terms of going in looking, looking at the practice, looking at the oversight and looking at the governance of those services. Those reports are available and are published on the HIQA website for anyone to see.
As we sit here, as I set out in my opening statement, we know the really good work that is being done. We need stakeholders, such as the committee, to talk about some of the good work while challenging us on the very significant problems that we face.
Certainly, we have that external oversight already. We have the external oversight from a financial perspective in terms of the Comptroller and Auditor General. It is more around focusing on implementing our reform programme, building our external capacity in terms of properties and placements, and building our workforce because those are the three things we know need to happen for us to be able to do what we do really well in some parts of the country. For example, Donegal, which I am only saying because it the most recent HIQA report, is fully compliant. Therefore, there are area of our services that are working really well, that are fully compliant but in areas where we do not have the staffing relative to the demand, we are struggling to be compliant.
Margaret Murphy O'Mahony (Fianna Fail)
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I thank Ms Duggan.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I thank Senator Murphy O'Mahony and call Senator Keogan.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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I thank Ms Duggan for coming in here this afternoon. I, once again, pay tribute to all the people who work in Tusla. All the social care workers and people who are involved in the multidisciplinary teams in Ms Duggan's organisation are amazing people. I am very grateful for them and I am sure there are many children around this country who are equally grateful.
If Ms Duggan will permit me, I would like to make a brief comment on her response here this morning. We are facing a child protection crisis yet the documents provided to this committee are saturated with procedural language and passive phrasing. Planning stages, strategic reviews and steering groups are not safeguards. They are not timelines and they are not answers. While children are missing, while tragedies occur, we are told about frameworks and committees. I acknowledge that resourcing challenges exist, but that cannot be the only explanation for repeated failures.
Currently, I believe Tusla is structurally, in governance and oversight, utterly failing some of our children which brings me to my first question. Is more money going to fix this? Tusla's budget for 2026 stands at €1.36 billion, the highest in its history. This is comparable to and in some cases exceeds spending in other European countries per child in care yet outcomes remain poor. There were over 163 children in unregistered special care arrangements as of mid-November. There are persistent unallocated cases and repeated high-profile failures. Is this truly a resource problem or is this a structural problem? I believe it is structural. What evidence can Ms Duggan provide this committee that additional funding will deliver better outcomes rather than more bureaucracy?
Ms Kate Duggan:
We have said we are probably looking at between 105,000 to 107,000 referrals this year and we are significantly challenged by the fact that we now almost have as many unaccompanied minors either being accommodated or in the care of Tusla as we have children in our mainstream services. When we talk in forums such as this and there is media reporting, today there are 5,866 children in the care of Tusla and 87% of those are in foster care families right across this country and are thriving because of the foster care families that are looking after them so well. As I referenced in my opening statement, we now know that nine in ten of our children in care are in education. We know the number of children in aftercare and young people who are engaged in education, in training, in third level education. Outcomes for the vast majority of young people who are in our care are really very good. It is very important to talk about, and I do, the cohort of young people, perhaps 100 or 150 young people, with very complex needs and very challenging behaviour that we really worry about, that we are working really hard to try and accommodate, and that we need the support of other agencies and State agencies with to be able to better meet their needs.
As we said, and I will not go through it again, we recognise that a complete restructuring of Tusla had to take place and that is going live on 1 January 2026.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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Just on those young people, in relation to single occupancy units, how many of those units exist around the country where you only have one child per housing unit where you would have a team looking after them? How many children are in single occupancy units?
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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Would there be just one child in one residence with social workers and everything?
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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Ms Duggan is telling me Tusla does not have any child at this moment in time.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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Okay, that is important.
In relation to the protection of children in IPAS centres, what happens if an incident occurs in relation to a child protection issue within those centres? What happens to the children in those centres? Where are they moved to? What happens with those children?
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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If an incident occurs in relation to a child protection issue in an IPAS centre to a child-----
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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Yes, where they are living with their parents. What happens to that child within that setting?
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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That is the largest one, but there are many IPAS centres.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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Would they be moved out of that setting immediately?
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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Obviously, if it is a serious risk to the child or something is after happening to the child, would they be moved out of that setting immediately?
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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The perpetrator would be moved.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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The perpetrator would be moved rather than the child.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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How many of those incidents have happened around the country? Would Ms Duggan have data on that?
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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That would be fantastic. I will come back in in the next session. I thank Ms Duggan.
Mr. Pat Smyth:
In terms of the Senator's questions and comments about cost, I might add that if she looks at the published accounts that we had here a couple of months ago, it is very clear that the number of administrative managers and people within that is a very small percentage. It is approximately 6% of the overall staff. Three hundred staff out of 5,500 staff are in that space. That is the level of senior management within that.
I would also draw the Senator's attention to the costs of the residential piece that we are talking about. Three years ago, we had a very small allocation against unaccompanied minors. Today, we have €120 million of that. You just cannot discount that and include that into that space. The actual costs of residential-----
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I thank Mr. Smyth. We might come back to this with the next member.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I call Deputy Farrelly.
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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We got the speaking order wrong but I thank the Cathaoirleach.
It is lovely to have the opportunity to meet with the witnesses again and have a conversation about this. There is so much I would love to discuss with them here this morning but I will stick to the agenda.
First, I have had the privilege when I was a youth worker of being a child protection trainer for volunteer youth workers. It was a brief training of four hours, eight hours or something like that to prepare people to get started. The mantra was always that the welfare of the child is of paramount importance to the work that we do and if we keep that central to what we are concerned about, we will not go too far wrong. I am guided by that this morning in terms of the conversation and questions I would like to put to the witnesses today. I am putting them in a context, and I try to do this every time we have the opportunity to speak.
I champion what Tusla says. The vast majority of work undertaken by Tusla should be celebrated. We do not do that enough. That is a big part of that public mistrust, narrative or discourse about Tusla out there. We do not often get to see the phenomenal work that takes place. I want to emphasise that this morning. However, I cannot hide my concern in the specific piece with regard to child protection services, special arrangement accommodation and arrangement settings for unaccompanied minors attending the State. With regard to regulation, how promptly can we learn from the reports that are coming in? How quickly can we take on lessons to ensure that we are acting very quickly, whether it is HIQA reports, feedback from the Department or Tusla's staff? How quickly can we turn that around?
Ms Kate Duggan:
In terms of lessons learned, I think I can say this, we cannot obviously talk about specific individual cases. If we even take the four, which I have acknowledged, significant instances that have caused us great concern in terms of the tragedies that came to four children who were known to our services. Immediately when an incident like that happens, we do our own internal review. They are turned around in anything from a week to two weeks. That obviously also goes to the NRP in terms of when it does its objective assessment. Certainly in those cases, those internal reviews are done. Any lessons learned from those cases have already been identified and are already being implemented within the agency. That is not to say that when the NRP reports come, something different might show or there may be a different lesson to learn. When a HIQA report comes, we immediately do a service action plan. There is a group in place at national level that Mr. Hone chairs that makes sure that all of those recommendations are implemented. We report on that through our service and integration reports to the board of Tusla.
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I am conscious of time. Is there any update from Ms Duggan's side in terms of the status of the NRP being put on a statutory footing? Has she heard any more about that? Is that progressing from her side?
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I thank Ms Duggan. I will ask her a little bit about the special accommodation arrangements and the accommodation for unaccompanied children. What is the percentage of those services that are not Tusla direct services or are outsourced to private companies?
Ms Kate Duggan:
I will let Ms Kavanagh talk in a second about separated children. In terms of our mainstream services, the first thing to say is that when we talk about special emergency arrangements, our numbers have been in and around 50 and 55. It was 58 up until 16 November. In that same period, 313 young people went into an SEA. It is about where they go in for an immediate place of safety. I have referenced this before. This could be where, in the middle of the night there may be a section 12 arrangement or a parent may need to volunteer a child into care because they are concerned about their behaviour. A total of 313 young people came in, but we moved them out to a registered centre as quickly as possible. At a point in time, there were 58. They are arrangements that are outsourced, particularly in terms of staffing, but maybe in some Tusla centres or other centres like rented apartments or holiday chalets. They have a staffing onsite. They are single occupancy.
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Is there data available in terms of the qualification of those staff? That is all set.
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Social work qualifications.
Ms Kate Duggan:
Social care, which is residential. It is a mix of social care with grade 6 qualification. The other thing that is important is when we started to strengthen our governance and oversight, every single one of those staff, even though they have been provided by an external organisation in Ms Mannion's department, they have set up a central compliance unit. Their Garda vetting and qualifications are checked. Their rosters have to be sent to us in terms of monitoring that.
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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That is more hands-on than I thought.
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Respectfully, if the Ms Duggan does not mind, I am going to jump on to the next question because of the clock. I want to try and get an update, if we can, on the well-being checks. Where are we at with that cohort of 40,000-odd? Ms Duggan said it is under way. Is it still expected to finish by March? Is it still expected to finish on time? What has been the nature of those checks so far?
Ms Kate Duggan:
The figure is in and around 42,000. It is important to quantify that when we looked at the numbers of children that were closed during the defined period, the number closed was at about 76,000 cases, but 4,000 of those were since re-referred to Tusla. They are obviously out of scope. That is where this number of just over 42,000 came from. Under the welfare check, what is important for us to establish first of all is that the child is in school, preschool, under an ECCE scheme, being homeschooled or has access to another State service. What we are doing now is working with colleagues in the Departments of Social Protection, Education and Youth and public expenditure on making sure that we have all of those children with their PPSN cross-checked against the school roll system in order that we can establish what school they are in, where they are in and use the mechanisms that are there through the mandated reporting if there are any concerns. Then, when we get that cohort, if there are children who are not in school who should be in school, we send that to the Department of Social Protection in terms of cross-referencing child benefit payments and all of that, working through a tiered model until we can establish that those-----
Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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That first tier, once there is-----
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputy. We will come back to that in the second round.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Before I move to Senator Mike Kennelly, I know I am very strict on time in the first round, but members are on different committees and have different responsibilities. I want to make sure everybody gets a chance to ask their question. I can potentially have a bit more flexibility in the second round. The Child Care (Amendment) Bill should address the statutory footing of the NRP. I call Senator Kennelly.
Mike Kennelly (Fine Gael)
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I welcome all the members of Tusla to today's committee meeting. I recognise and honour the work Ms Duggan and her team carry out. It is among the most vital in the State. Ms Duggan mentioned that it is one of the most important roles in the country. I think it is the most important role in the country.
My contribution this morning relates to the third last paragraph. This is the reason why the witnesses are here, the significant incidents involving four young people known to Tusla services. We learn from the past. In 2024, the national review panel report published in mid-2025 recorded the deaths of 19 children and young people who were known to Tusla through aftercare or social work contact. This finding raises serious concerns about the adequacy of existing safeguards and effectiveness of interventions provided to vulnerable young people. In this context, what warning flags were identified in that report? What specific actions have been taken by Tusla in response to that report?
Mike Kennelly (Fine Gael)
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The national review panel report of 2024. I think it came out in mid-2025 on the deaths of children.
Ms Kate Duggan:
The first thing is that when the NRP does its reviews on every single child reported to it, no more than our HIQA reports or the other reports, we immediately establish a system to implement any of the recommendations that come from that. It is important when we talk about the deaths of children in care, it is tragic for us. When a child in care dies, it is distressing for our staff.
Tusla was established in 2014. From then to 2025, there were 27 notifications of death of children in care. I also think it is important to point out that 15 of those were from natural causes. The NRP would not normally make findings where the death was from a natural cause. Eight of the deaths were by suicide. That is a concern. I do not want to talk about specific cases, but normally when the NRP findings come out, they are really about the recommendations of better interagency working and better access to mental health services for those children. Two of the deaths were by drug overdose. When we look at that, the NRP often makes recommendations in terms of earlier access within HSE addiction services. Two of the deaths were accidental. What we see as the biggest theme coming from the NRP reports is the need for more interagency co-operation and the need for children in State services, who have been brought into State services because of the level of neglect or abuse that they have faced, to be prioritised for access to specialist services, for example, addiction and mental health. A number of the recommendations are not just for Tulsa. They may be for the Health Service Executive or they may be for other State agencies. Certainly, with any recommendations that are for us, we have a system in place whereby we implement them and report to our board on their implementation.
Mike Kennelly (Fine Gael)
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I accept that. Ms Duggan said, "We are in the final stages of planning for the implementation of a new operating model in our community services." That has to be welcomed. That was within the last 18 months. Is that a reflection of the report Ms Duggan just read out to me, in that these are the recommendations Tusla is implementing to address the concerns raised?
Ms Kate Duggan:
No. When we looked at Tusla as an agency, lots of the different issues we looked at were around inequity between areas in terms of the amount of services they needed to provide and the resources they had available, and how to make that more equitable. We were looking at where our services were fragmented and where parents were having to go and knock on different doors to try to get a service. There was no access to early intervention and family support services. When we look at the findings from HIQA, they talk about the fact that we needed children to be able to move more seamlessly between services. We designed a reform programme in 2024 that cuts across all the work we are doing around recruiting and training staff and all the work we are doing now around having one single child record. We are the only public service that will have one single record for children. There was 18 months of planning for the work on the new structures because we were completely transforming the whole way our system was structured and governed and developing new ways of working. It has taken 18 months to fully be ready to go live on 1 January across the whole country for a whole new way of working. Of course, that incorporates learning from HIQA reports and NRP reports around how we work in a more integrated way, how families get earlier intervention, how we use the resources we have more efficiently, and how we have better oversight of how children get access to services. It is such a significant change that it has taken 18 months to fully plan and be ready to go live on 1 January.
Mike Kennelly (Fine Gael)
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Okay. In relation to one of the tragic events where a young person was roaming the city of Dublin, if that happened in the voluntary sector, for example, at coaching level with teams travelling to clubs and other clubs, there would be accountability and there would be heads rocked and rolled. Where is the accountability in this? This should never have happened.
Ms Kate Duggan:
I will not talk about that specific case but what is very important to talk about is that, when children are living with us, these are their homes. They are living in a foster family or in a residential centre and these are their homes. There are children where, if they are taken out, perhaps for a day trip, that is risk assessed. We cannot keep these children locked in their homes, we cannot lock doors in terms of the restraints that may be available to us to be able to use as professionals and as a State service. What we see in some instances is that, on any particular day, we may have two or three young people who have absconded. They have got out. Perhaps they were supposed to be in school but left, or they were on a trip and bolted. In this case, I came out publicly to say that the young person was on a trip, the young person got away, the young person made their way back to a family home, and then that young person subsequently left and absconded from the family home and went missing. On any particular day, we have three or four young people who may have gone on a trip or may have gone to school and do not come back when they are supposed to come back, either in terms of their curfew or after their activity. This is when we work with the Garda to try to locate those children as quickly as possible.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Senator and Ms Duggan. We are doing a very good job of staying away from individual cases and sticking with protocols and policies, and we will continue to do that. We will move on to Senator Nessa Cosgrove.
Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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I thank the witnesses for coming in. At the outset, I want to commend the wonderful work that is done by Tusla right across the board, from Tulsa-funded services to its staff. I have said it here before that many of my closest friends work either for Tusla or for Tusla-funded services.
I want to talk about the single point of entry and how that is going to work, including with funded services such as step-down and step-up programmes. Reference was made to 19 new family support and intervention services. Are they going to be staffed directly by Tusla employees? I know from people working on the ground within the areas of family support and social care that the administrative burden can be enormous and takes away from the face-to-face work. How is that going to feed into the single point of entry? Is it through the Meitheal model? I do not know how, so I just want to hear a bit more about that, please.
Ms Kate Duggan:
I will start off and then bring in Mr. Hone. We are now a fully digitally enabled service. That makes it very easy. Today, for example, one cannot request just a family support and intervention service from Tusla. Rather, one has to go through the child protection route. People can request a family support and intervention service, they can refer for child protection services, or they can refer for a Meitheal. What this does not change is that, in communities right across the country today, community and voluntary services like family resource centres deliver really good universal programmes such as parenting programmes and teen parent programmes. All of that stays the same. That stays as the universal service. It stays the service where people can self-refer to. Where a referral is made through the portal, however, that is now going to be screened. That we now have a digitally enabled service gives staff more face-to-face time and more time with service users-----
Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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Is that right across the board so that voluntary and community staff would be able to directly report, or whatever, straight away as well?
Mr. Gerry Hone:
It is one of the big changes. I have been immensely proud over the years going around the country looking at the work that our prevention, partnership and family support services, PPFS, have done, all the different projects that they run, and all the people that have benefited from that. Unfortunately, we have not learned from that work because there was no pathway for recording that particular amount of work on our systems. The system we are setting up will actually track all of the interventions with families that have happened, both in the community and voluntary sector and from our own internal family support services. There is a system now of assessment of need that is firmly based in the five national outcomes for children and that we are trying to achieve across government. All activities will be benchmarked against those outcomes. Even when we ask the community and voluntary sector to undertake an intervention with a family, there will be clear objectives and outcomes for what we have to reach, and we will be measuring the effectiveness.
Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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I know there are huge strides being made to address the shortage of social workers but what are the strides to address the shortage of social care workers? Has the issue of pensions come into it? That is a huge issue because it is an ageing workforce and we are trying to attract younger people in. Social care is going to bottom out unless it is addressed.
I am wondering what the measures are to address it.
Ms Rosarii Mannion:
The Senator is quite right and it is possibly more challenging than it is in social work. What we have done is that we have brought forward a work-based learning programme for social care. It is aligned to the apprenticeship model and it is the way of the future. We are growing our own pipeline. We are identifying staff and sensitising them to the work environment from year one and day one. The staff are part of the teams. They have a mentor and they know what the work involves.
Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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Are they directly employed Tusla social care workers? Will there be pay parity with voluntary and community sectors where people are doing the same jobs?
Ms Rosarii Mannion:
Absolutely. The starting pay for the work-based learning programme is €31,000. It is a three-year programme. At the end of it, participants will receive permanent, pensionable jobs. They will have all the terms and conditions. One of the initiatives we have taken is an all-employers forum for social care and the community and voluntary sectors are key and active participants in that forum. They are positive about this. In the first cohort, there were 17 staff for Tusla and two for Oberstown. The community and voluntary sectors have put up their hands and in 2026 they want to take on participants in the work-based learning programme, and I will follow through on that with them. This is the way of the future. Unfortunately, the downside is that it will be three years before that pipeline starts to emerge, but it is sustainable. We will not be solely reliant on the overseas pipeline and so on.
Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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I only have a minute left and I want to talk about the special emergency arrangements, SEAs, and staffing. For young people, being under an emergency arrangement must be turbulent and chaotic. What are the qualifications of workers in SEAs? Do they get therapeutic crisis intervention, TCI, training? Are they trained to social care level? I can imagine those circumstances. What is the average length of time children are under special emergency arrangements?
Ms Kate Duggan:
The oversight of those arrangements is social care led. The latest data, and we can certainly get the November data for the Senator if she wants it, is that on 19 October, one child had been in a special emergency arrangement for 36 months. The child is there because he is deemed to be doing well in it. It is still a special emergency arrangement. It is important to note that the reason that arrangement would not achieve registration is largely to do with the fact it is a domiciliary arrangement. I do not want to identify it. It could be an apartment, a townhouse or a holiday chalet and that would not meet the registration standards to be a residential children's unit. That is what differentiates it from a residential unit.
The average would be that 38 children would be under it for one to six months. That is, out of 55 children, 38 are in those arrangements for one to six months.
Emer Currie (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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I acknowledge the scale of the work Tusla does and the sensitivity of it. It is important that we are here to discuss child protection matters and we only really get to scratch the surface of it in the time we have. I thank Tusla for the work it does and for engaging with us today.
In her opening statement, Ms Duggan outlined that the Minister for children has initiated well-being checks on all cases closed by child protection and welfare services during the Covid-19 pandemic between 1 March 2020 and 28 February 2022 and that the process has commenced. I want to understand more about the scale and scope of that work. A lot of the focus today has been on resources and Tusla's workforce. How is that fitting in?
How many closed cases fall within this period? Are all the cases being actively assessed as part of the well-being checks? What does the well-being check process entail? Perhaps Ms Duggan could describe the escalation protocols, the average length of time to complete a check and the expected timeframe in which Tusla will complete all the checks?
I will then come back in with a few questions about resources.
Ms Kate Duggan:
When the Minister proposed this, because of the timeline relevant to two of the cases we talked about and the significant tragic events that have happened, one of the things we spoke to her about and with which she agreed was that we would have an independent steering group to oversee it. She has appointed Tanya Ward, who is the CEO of the Children's Rights Alliance, as the independent chair of that steering group. The independent steering group is important because, in order to conduct a welfare check, we need to be able to work and engage with all the different State agencies and Departments that have a role under children first and the child protection and welfare responsibilities.
The methodology for the check is going to the steering group for approval next week. I do not want to talk in detail about the full methodology. Of the more than 76,000 cases that were closed during that period, 34,000 - I am using approximate figures; we have the full figures - were referred back to Tusla and so someone has been working or has worked with those families. That leaves approximately 42,000 children, and perhaps now young people, who have to be identified to make sure they are in the relevant State service. For many, that means that they are in preschool or school. That is the first point of establishing their welfare. It is that they are in preschool or school so that they are in an environment in which, if there are any concerns about the child, the mandated people who work in those environments will know and will be reminded to make a referral to us if they have any concerns about the children and young people.
Thankfully, as we now have this digital system, we were able to get PPSNs for all those children by interfacing with the Department of Social Protection and the Department of public expenditure with the single file and that will allow us to cross-reference with the Department of education primary online database, POD, and post-primary online database, P-POD, systems for school registration. We will work through the phases until we have identified that every child is in the appropriate setting and that those settings know that if they have any concerns, they should talk to and refer to Tusla. Then, if there are a small number of young people we cannot locate, which is a risk, particularly with movement of people within Ireland and abroad, we will engage with international social services and An Garda Síochána to try to locate those children, if there are any.
Mr. Gerry Hone:
The methodology is important because if parents in this room today who had a child who was known to Tusla in the past suddenly became aware that another check would be carried out on their child, what we are doing has to be proportionate and transparent. How we respond under children first and our responsibilities has to be proportionate to the need. We therefore have to be careful that we do not step on people's human rights in the methodology we undertake and that we are transparent about what we are doing so that parents fully understand what we are doing, why we are doing it and how we are going about it.
Emer Currie (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Some 96% of children are signed up to the early childhood care and education, ECCE, programme. Will Tusla start with the 4% who are not, or will it do it all at once?
Ms Kate Duggan:
It can be done at once from a desktop perspective because we will be cross-referencing. Some children, for example, may be being home-schooled so we just have to check.
It is then about identifying very quickly the group that is not registered to a State system through ECCE or a school and then checking with the Department of Social Protection to identify child benefit arrangements. We have to put more time and resources into trying to locate that percentage of the population.
Emer Currie (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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What knock-on effect does that have on Tusla's resources?
Ms Kate Duggan:
We have been given additional funding to complete this. As I said, what we are working through now is making sure we are only having to use social work or social care resource where there is a known concern or where we cannot locate a child who is not in a setting where mandated persons would have eyes on him or her. We have ring-fenced resources. We are looking at where we have taken people from different parts of the system who may have the qualification but are not in front-line direct work at the moment.
Emer Currie (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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I thank Ms Duggan. The Chair swapped time slots with me, so I thank her.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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That is no problem; I always go last. I call Deputy Ó Murchú.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCathaoirleach. Tá failte roimh Kate Duggan agus an fhoireann uilig. Gabhaim buíochas leo.
We all know the context and why we are here. There were four tragic and shocking circumstances. A big thing for us is about ensuring that we have a framework that can look after children, and particularly those most vulnerable, while accepting that there is a huge amount of need out there and I would not like to have the list in front of me that the witnesses have in front of them now.
I will move to special emergency placements. Ms Duggan spoke about an increase in that regard. We obviously know there are people coming from abroad, including those from Ukraine and those applying for international protection, some of whom are unaccompanied minors. Has there also been a spike in relation to more complex cases? Has there been a study of what has happened? In some, though not all, cases, we could also be looking at people and families where, with more significant interventions made at an earlier stage, we could have avoided this situation.
Ms Kate Duggan:
Yes. We spoke to that point earlier. There are two cohorts. We recently had delegations visiting from Estonia, the Netherlands and Norway. We are constantly in contact with our colleagues in Northern Ireland and England. There is real concern at the moment in all child protection services across Europe about the changing environment that we are operating within, including the risks of online grooming-----
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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I assume there is societal stuff here.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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I assume there are also drugs and the associated complexity.
Ms Kate Duggan:
There is also homelessness, as I set out in the statement. Some children are in IPAS centres. There are drugs and addiction. There is a lack of mental health services and access to disability services. I referred to these issues in an earlier response to another of the Deputies. We are seeing 16- and 17-year-old children who are highly dysregulated and may be touching off the care system for the first time.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Is that because they were missed?
Ms Kate Duggan:
It is not so much that they were missed but because of some of the behaviours where they are a risk to themselves, their siblings or other peers, where there is a real concern about criminal exploitation or sexual exploitation, and where their families are really struggling to keep the children safe. It is not the risk of parents but the risk of peers on peers. It is the risk of individuals on siblings. There is a small cohort of children that we are doing our best to try to support but who have very difficult and challenging behaviours. It is important that we talk about staffing and the work the staff do. We have seen a significant increase in the extreme levels of violence and harassment against our staff in our community services and, particularly, in our residential services.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Will Mr. Hone give a couple of examples?
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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There is also, for some of them, sexualised behaviour at a very young age.
Mr. Gerry Hone:
Some of the behaviour is sexualised, yes. There is a lot of physical and aggressive behaviour. The Deputy rightly mentioned the need for positive early intervention. We are making changes in our services. A lot of young people have a history of families not engaging with services to which they have been referred. Now, with our integrated front door and the way we deliver services, we can track those families who do not engage with services when they are provided. We can track that over time.
I always say that in terms of referrals coming in, we are aware of the vulnerabilities, the families who are vulnerable out there and who might need additional supports, even though they do not often come forward looking for the help that they require.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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We spoke about that on the previous occasion. There needs to be some sort of checking facility, which is not necessarily a function for Tusla. Mr. Hone spoke about the specialist public health nurse or somebody who can refer in.
Ms Kate Duggan:
For us, it is out of concern for these children and young people. We have staff members who are being stabbed and whose chest bones are being broken. We have referrals for 11- or 12-year-olds who could have 200 incidents or engagements with An Garda Síochána. For many of those young people, it is the result of exploitation, criminal exploitation or the risk of sexual exploitation, perhaps through online grooming. I do not know if any committee members saw the episode of "Prime Time" last night. There is a changing environment when we think about child protection risk and child protection concerns in 2025. They are somewhat different from the risks that were there previously.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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I wholly accept that, even anecdotally, in relation to issues that would come to us and that we would see. I might have a conversation later about a number of cases. I would not like to have the list that is in front of our witnesses, but it is about making sure that we have the framework to deal with the issues that have led to this meeting. Beyond that, Ms Duggan spoke about the capacity that Tusla and the community and voluntary sector lack. The committee has had before it representatives of the ABC Programme, Archways, the Northside Partnership, Monaghan Children and Young People's Services Committee, CYPSC, Cox's Demesne Youth and Community Project in Dundalk and the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, ISPCC. They all spoke about referrals from Tusla being way up. They also said that has created an issue in respect of how many of those children that those organisations could get to.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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The Deputy should leave the witnesses time to respond.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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What are we going to do to deal with the mess in front of us?
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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That cannot be enough.
Ms Kate Duggan:
No. We are open. We believe there needs to be further significant investment, particularly in early support. That is not even in Tusla. That is supporting parents with mental health and addiction issues. The best place for children to grow up is with their families. For us, it is about asking how to invest in and strengthen families and how to ensure that parents are enabled and supported to deal with issues they may have around addiction or domestic violence.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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We must avoid those disaster scenarios. We also need the capacity to deal with disaster scenarios. Sometimes we are too late.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I am next. We will have a second round, with five minutes each, thereafter. Once we stick to that time, we will all get extra time.
I join my colleagues in commending all the witnesses on being here today. I especially commend the staff who are on the ground and working. Tusla is probably going to get 105,000 referrals by the end of the year. That is a huge number of vulnerable children. I often think about the capacity of Croke Park being 80,000 and we could put those vulnerable children in there. Those are all real children behind the number. We also must acknowledge that perhaps the system is working well when people are making those referrals. We will not go into specific cases but I know that in one of those cases, there is a good example of where a mandated person flagged an issue, and we must acknowledge that the system is working. That 5,866 children are being cared for in a foster care home is fantastic. That 87% figure is good. I know we want to go further.
Then we have to acknowledge that Tusla is acting as a parent and a home to 2,972 children in residential care settings. It is a huge responsibility. For the most part, it is doing it very well and always with the best intentions. However, I am also acutely aware that the general public is watching us today and I have got numerous emails, as I am sure all the other Deputies and Senators have. People want us to ask specific questions about specific cases which we cannot do. They want to know the answers to the questions of where people were and were not and who was involved and who was not. That is the nature of the news today. People want answers and they want them now. The duty falls to us to ask the questions to ensure we are identifying weaknesses and where we can make improvements.
I want to home in on the complex cases that Deputy Ó Murchú was just discussing. We have about 100 to 150 very complex cases. Have there been changes to the structure of the set-up of the teams? I know we have a lot of social workers and social care workers. My background is in behaviour support as a behavioural psychologist. I know we had crisis prevention intervention within some of the schools for those kind of violent outburst. What changes have happened on the ground in teams and in training over the past two to three years while we see such an increase in those really complex cases?
Ms Kate Duggan:
Again, I will give a bit of information on the expanded qualifications. That has been another area on which we have really focused in terms of recruitment of staff. We recognise that with the changing need and the different needs of children, young people and families that come to us, we need a more diverse workforce. I already referenced the establishment of our six therapeutic teams. We would like to be able, in the future, grow that further. Also, within our residential care and special care units, we have introduced new expanded qualifications. Ms Mannion will talk to that.
Ms Rosarii Mannion:
As our CEO has said, we want our workforce to reflect the needs of our client base. We are predominantly social work social carers. As the CEO has said, we do need to expand. We are working on that with various therapeutic interventions, the use of special care workers and all the rest. We do not want to over-egg it but our environment is an extremely tough place to work. Going back to the violence, harassment and aggression, every week thus far this year we have received 59 reportable incidents of violence, harassment and aggression. There have been 51 this week so far and this year to date, it is 2,378. That is the complexity of the environment we are in. Again, I wish to acknowledge our staff who turn in to do this work given the range of options that are available. They are simply outstanding. Long term, through a reform programme and with multidisciplinary workforce, it will happen over time. This is not a quick fix, unfortunately. If it was, we would have it implemented. These initiatives will take possibly three years before we will see the impact. Going back to the earlier points, there is a major societal shift. We know that. You can turn on the news and see the level of violence, harassment and aggression that is out there and we are at the hard end of that. It is making our recruitment and retention more difficult. We are really open. If there is anything at all we need to do that we are not doing and that we should or that we can do, we will try everything. We will pilot things. We do want to improve, above and beyond, the work environment for our staff, the engagement with the colleges and getting our own workforce coming through.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I thank Ms Mannion for that. In the interests of time, I am going to keep going. When I think of my own training in behaviour support, we were trained for aggression. Maybe that is something to look at and that the staff get that support. Staying with that, something Ms Duggan referenced earlier was that Tusla was restricted in what restraints and different things it could put in. I know from parents coming into the office, if children are getting involved in or exposed to criminality, parents can be tearing their hair out as to how to keep their children safe from crime and from drugs. What is available to Tusla to keep those kids safe? We know special care is difficult to get into; naturally, as we do not want our kids locked up. However, if they need to be in special care, we might need to make sure it is available. Is there a medium level or a higher support level needed, or is there a gap there?
Ms Kate Duggan:
There is a gap. What we have identified now is the need for what we are calling transitional step-up or step-down placements. There are young people who, like the Cathaoirleach just said, may need this. We do not want children to have to be in special care where they are deprived of their liberty and locked up even though they have not committed a crime. However, we recognise that in terms of a more robust physical environment, we need a particular type of physical unit in terms of the windows being strengthened and looking at all the different aspects needed within the physical environment. We have a plan for two of those step-down units to be opened next year. This will be in 2026, as I understand it. This week or early next week, we are engaging again with HIQA as the regulator and with our own agency on that question around the safe use of restraint where it is needed and when it is accurate, in terms of being able to lock a door, put a bell on a door or step in and hold somebody who is in a particular incident. While all of our staff in residential services receive TCI training, it is about now looking back at that again to see if there is something different or better we should be doing in terms of those engagements and how we support staff. It has been in the media. We have had no option because we also have health and safety legislation and a duty to keep our staff safe at work. There have been incidents over the past year where we have had to employ close protective personnel within some of our special care and residential units in order to keep our staff safe from particular challenging environments. We have done that with the support of HIQA in terms of being able to maintain our registration and our compliance with the standards. It is challenging.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I think the general public are horrified when they hear about those protection officers being needed but they are also horrified when they hear that children abscond. It is to get the balance.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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I suppose I am not horrified in relation to the violence. As a foster parent, I would have experience. Many foster parents out there, just like the Tusla staff, would have also experienced violence and threatening behaviour not only to themselves as a foster parent but perhaps towards members of their family as well. It does happen. I would like to know the number of incidents within the foster home settings that have been reported.
We here to talk about aftercare and what happens and sometimes does not happen that regard. I had a question recently that I submitted regarding Ukrainian minors who came here. I got a response stating that there have been 879 referrals for Ukrainian minors and that Tusla is providing care to 777. Of those, 432 had aged out of the service into the aftercare and Tusla was only looking after five of those cases. I was horrified to hear that. I could not believe it. Where are the other children? Does Tusla know where they are? I know one child who turned 18 was picked up in a taxi from the residence he was staying in and was moved into a hotel room with three other individuals. That is not what aftercare is about. Where are those other children? What concrete steps has Tusla taken to find out where they are or what their future plans are? Do we know where they are? Are they safe? Are they in an environment that is safe? Have they returned to the country? Where are those children?
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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They are only children.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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Does Tusla not have a duty with aftercare services for that child?
Ms Lorna Kavanagh:
It is a very small number. They would be the ones who were in our care and most of those young people would have had additional vulnerabilities.
It is such a small number, I will not go into much more detail. In the main, the package of support for young Ukrainian people who age out is much broader than the package of support for an Irish kid who ages out from care because there is an immediate placement, bed and room identified for the former through the International Protection Accommodation Services.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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Do we have enough aftercare staff?
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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In general, do we have enough aftercare staff? This week, another incident happened where a child lost his life.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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If a child in a residential placement with Tusla turns 18 and does not have an aftercare worker, what does Tusla do with that child?
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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No, just an Irish child tomorrow morning.
Ms Lorna Kavanagh:
In general, if they have been in care for a year, will have an aftercare entitlement. At 16, the social worker would link with the aftercare team and make a referral for aftercare services, and then there would be a joint plan. The care plan would incorporate what the aftercare plan was going to be for the young person. Some young people remain with their foster carers beyond 18, some young people may move into accommodation within a university, some children opt to go back home, some opt to move in with a relative, some-----
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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What if that option is not available to them?
Ms Lorna Kavanagh:
If that option is not available, there are some aftercare residential placements. The worst-case scenario would be that the young person does not have anywhere to go. Then we would liaise with homeless services around putting a package of support in around the young person, but no young person is discharged to homeless services without there being a firm plan and somewhere for them to go.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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There is a care plan put in place for that child.
Ms Lorna Kavanagh:
Absolutely, and it is the same for our young international protection people. If they have arrived at 17, if they have no entitlement to aftercare and if they get their status, their route is into homelessness but they are never just given a freefone number. We work with the local authorities and with services to get them identified accommodation to move on to and we support them in that move.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Thank you, Ms Kavanagh.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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But we do not know where those children are. Trafficking-----
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I now move to Deputy Claire Kerrane.
Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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I have just a couple of quick questions. In terms of aftercare, I will not mention any details, but as regards a recent inquest, the recommendation was made that preparation of an aftercare plan should begin when the young person had his or her 17th birthday. Is that being complied with when the child turns 17 rather than having a situation whereby the child is approaching 18 and has no idea where they will be next month, with that putting pressure on the young person?
I will ask my other few quick questions now. There was an article just this week referring to two children with High Court orders, as happens, in terms of special care and no special care beds being available, with only 15 or 16 of the 26 in the State being operational. I would like to get an idea of where we are with that. Can the witnesses tell us how many cases are under review by the national review panel? I refer to the review cases Tusla has asked the panel to look at.
In relation to the reforms that will take place from January 2026, a number of social care workers are worried that they will be asked from next January to complete assessments on children that only social workers are qualified to do. I want to flag that as an issue they are genuinely concerned about.
I would like an update on the welfare checks that are under way for the period of Covid. I know it was referred to earlier.
I make my next point in a very genuine way. It is about the case of the ten-year-old that was mentioned - I will say no more - and how the press statement that came out from Tusla afterwards referred to a child with "significant behavioural issues". Again, the following point comes from a good place. We need to be really careful in terms of the language we use. If a victim of rape goes to court tomorrow, there are always outcries and, naturally, outrage when questions are asked almost as to the victim's behaviour and what the victim did. We need to be really careful in terms of whoever is doing Tusla's media and press reports. No such reference should be made, especially in a case like that. I say that just to be helpful.
Ms Kate Duggan:
That last piece is very helpful. We have certainly taken that on board, and a number of people contacted us about that. I thank the Deputy for that. We apologise for that statement, the way it was released, its impact and the wording around it.
I do not have the aftercare figures, but what we will get to the Deputy immediately after this are the numbers in relation to aftercare and the numbers who have their aftercare plan at 17. We also have a breakdown of where our young people in aftercare are, as in, if they are still in foster care. We will get that to the Deputy.
In terms of the High Court orders, unfortunately, we have two young people today who have a High Court order for special care where we are unable to admit them to that. We have special care capacity at 15. We have worked tirelessly and, again, Ms Mannion could go through all the efforts we made. We got a sanctioning from our Department and the Department of public expenditure and reform for a new special care worker grade, which is at a higher level of pay, with better incremental levels. We have done our overseas campaign and we have done recruitment fairs across the whole country - we can certainly share with the Deputy all the efforts we have made - and we have been unable to open a single extra bed. That is of great concern to us. Our focus now is on more timely discharge planning for the young people who are there to be able to facilitate those two young people to be admitted. I am not exaggerating when I say we are working night and day as a management team in terms of trying to deal with that. We do not want to be in contempt of a High Court order but, more importantly, we do not want those young people not being able to access the services they require.
In terms of the NRP case, I am not sure if the Deputy is talking about the four specific incidents of concern.
Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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Just how many cases are on the national review panel's books now?
Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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That is fine.
Ms Kate Duggan:
We will get that in terms of the referrals we made. Certainly, out of the four significant and tragic events we are dealing with - the referrals we have made to the NRP - two of our internal reviews are completed and have gone to the panel. One internal review should be completed this week and-----
Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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Social care workers are concerned that, with the changes, they will be asked to assess children in cases that only social workers are qualified to do.
Ms Rosarii Mannion:
May I make one further point for the benefit of the Deputy? Of the 700 social care graduates who emerged earlier this year, 100 have registered with CORU, so there are 600 social care graduates out there who do not intend to go into social care practice at this point in time. That is something else we are looking at, but that is just to give the Deputy the scale of the challenge we face in terms of our homegrown pool.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Thank you, Ms Mannion. I now move to Senator Nessa Cosgrove.
Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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I thank the witnesses for coming back in. To go back to staff shortages and the reluctance of people to register with CORU, if you are starting off on a wage of €31,000 with a level 7 or a level 8 qualification, why would you choose a career like that? It is a little above the minimum wage. Staffing, we know, is a huge issue, but pay-related staffing is also a major issue. The undervaluing that is attached to social care work through the wages is very evident, so I cannot even imagine how difficult it is not only to recruit people but also, looking into special care, to try to recruit someone into that environment. The wages have to go up. The sector is very hard to unionise - I am coming at this from a trade union point of view - because it is so varied. There are so many different sections within it and there are so many different job titles. For someone to come out with a qualification at level 7 or level 8 and start on €31,000 is an insult, especially given the level of work people are doing. If there is a pathway for people moving from a degree in social care towards social work, which will involve a higher rate of pay, and they will be directly employed by Tusla, they will have pensions, they will have increments and people will choose that career, so it will bottom out. That is one issue I wanted to raise.
Again, it is going to bottom out. That is one issue I wanted to raise. Another issue I wanted to talk about is aftercare.
Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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The scheme Ms Mannion spoke about earlier on-----
Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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They will go straight into that €41,000.
Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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What do they start off on?
Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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For the level of work they are doing-----
Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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Can I also ask about the both the therapeutic teams? Are they going to be attached to the child protection teams? If a referral is made directly in, will there be addiction support or family therapy or is there going to be a separate team altogether? I am just thinking about different areas. If a referral is going in, will that wrap-around support be there immediately?
Ms Kate Duggan:
To be very honest, we only got funding for six of those teams. There are six in place, so it is one per region. As we said, with any new child coming into care, we would start from there, and they receive that multidisciplinary assessment to inform their care plan. It would not be that we would be going into a role that is not within our statutory remit, like the provision of mental health service or addiction services. That is not within our statutory function; it is under the health Act in terms of the HSE. This is more around a developmental perspective. That multidisciplinary therapeutic assessment is to help inform their care plan.
Mr. Gerry Hone:
If the Senator looks at how our front-line social care teams and social work teams actually operate, they work in the community within child and family support networks. Within those networks, there are groups of providers which include the HSE, An Garda Síochána and the community and voluntary sector, all working together to respond to need. That can provide access to therapeutic needs. With many of the Meitheal programmes that we see working in the community, the children and young people subject to those programmes have improved access to services.
Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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There are waiting lists for services, such as therapeutical or psychology services. The waiting lists are through the roof. It is the same with CAMHS. I know that is beyond the remit here.
I want to also ask about a young person's eligibility for aftercare. If someone is in care in the first place, the whole family system has broken down. It is at the end of the line. To be eligible for aftercare, is a year too long? If anyone is in care at all, or if anyone is being removed from the family home, should they automatically be entitled to aftercare rather than having this year stipulation?
Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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A year is a long time. If a person is in care at all, they should be entitled to aftercare.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I call Deputy Ó Murchú.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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If I could deal with the aftercare payment, I get what was said that there is no room. However, there is always some flexibility and I am sure many an organisation has broken its own rules in the right way at times. What I am going to talk about specifically in a non-specific way is the idea of somebody who has availed of Tusla's services, but has not necessarily been taken into care, and the circumstances and situation get really bad. If a person is 18 years of age, what happens? We are talking about somebody who cannot stay in that family setting and there is no alternative family setting for them to go to. Tusla's may be attempting to get the local authority to sort out emergency accommodation but this child may be hoping to stay in school. Without some sort of payment, this is not going to happen. I accept Tusla has rules but there has to be an element of flexibility. If Tusla cannot provide that flexibility, or it needs to be provided to it, that is something we need to chase as a piece of work-----
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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That is only if they fit the previous criteria. There may have been scenarios and an alternative location was found for them, but it was not necessarily in care, and they may have returned to the household setting and circumstances got worse, whether they are dealing with all the complexities, addiction or whatever else. The fact is that they are now caught out. Ms Duggan is saying Tusla's hands are tied in relation to being able to make that payment. I am not saying it should be paid straightaway in every scenario payment. I have no problem with there being strict criteria in relation to it being investigated but it is something that we need to follow up on. It is failing. We might not be talking about a large number of cases but we are talking about a number of cases and people in really bad circumstances.
Obviously, we know about the reforms. It was said that a number of the reviews are going to be dealt with in the next while. It is about ensuring those recommendations are made. I suppose it is ongoing beyond the welfare checks that have been done as regards Covid. Operating procedures are going to change and there will be more consistent and constant welfare checks while accepting that not everyone wants that call from Tusla if things are going very well.
I refer to the pressure the community and voluntary sector is under and the pressure Tusla and its staff is under. It is all well and good talking about Meitheal and inter-agency but nobody probably has the capacity, tools and rules to deal with what is out there. We need a review of all services to see what capacity we have, and what is the need. We all know where that conversation will go.
Ms Kate Duggan:
Again, as part of our reform programme, we have looked at the development of a resource allocation model, and I think it is one of the first in the public sector. If we take a particular network, we have looked at what the demand is within that network in terms of child population, deprivation, county development planning, open referrals cases before the courts and all of those kind of things. We have looked at what is the resource available to that network in terms of Tusla or the commission services that we fund.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Is that done across the State?
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Yes 100%.
Ms Kate Duggan:
We have just done it. We are now able to see what the minimum requirements that are needed in every one of our new networks are and where the gaps in terms of the supply of resources that we have relative to the demand are. That is where this figure of a gap of about 400 across the country has come from.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Is Ms Duggan telling me that 400 would fill all those gaps?
Ms Kate Duggan:
If we had an additional 400 front-line staff, it would go a long way to being able to address the current Tusla demand that is there. That is not the demand for disability or mental health services.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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No, I get that. Tusla can only look after its own to some degree, although it obviously needs to be involved in inter-agency work. Is that taken into account where it is referring on to others in the community and voluntary sector? They would fit into that criteria - there are referrals to Tusla that it is referring to others. Is it taking into account the capacity of those other organisations in relation to dealing with-----
Mr. Gerry Hone:
We have a good relationship with the HSE and our partners at a national level, and we are continually working on that and building it. The Deputy is right when he says there needs to be a conversation about how best to manage the complexity of need we are facing because the need has changed. I sit on a vulnerable children's group in the Department, and that group is going to be put on a statutory footing as part of the new amendments to the legislation, which will help. The duty to co-operate will also help. We have also begun an engagement around a concept model of care that might work for some of the complex behaviours we were talking about today, with all of our stakeholders around the table. We have nominees across agencies at the moment to attend a group to look at a concept model of care for some of the extreme needs we are facing. It needs to be an inter-agency conversation.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Yes, 100%.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputy.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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How long do our witnesses think that would take?
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I thank Ms Duggan. I will go next and then we will welcome a non-member to the committee today.
Obviously, there has been a huge increase in the number of unaccompanied minors. The number of unaccompanied minors in the system is now the same as the number of Irish children. I know we have age verification and age estimation. I imagine it is very difficult when people present saying that they are children. If there are concerns as to whether they are truly children or whether they are adults, they cannot be placed in an IPAS centre. They cannot be placed in an adult centre because they are saying they are children but they cannot be placed in a children's centre if there are concerns about their age. If there are such concerns, children might have to be placed in smaller settings. Does Tusla have any figures as to the number of individuals who present identifying as adults but are later discovered to be minors?
Ms Lorna Kavanagh:
We do not have any figures on that at the minute. Where a young person is referred, there is a presumption of minority. Once that referral is made, we have to presume that the person in front of us is a child and that he or she is entitled to all the same rights as any other child. It is very difficult to rebut a claim of minority and the presumption of minority so we end up with young people being given the benefit of the doubt. We expect that about 20% of our young people would be in that space. Additional information that the Garda has come across will sometimes come to our attention. The Garda makes that available to us. We then engage with the young person again, put that information to them and give them the right to reply. We then make a decision as to whether they are entitled to continue in children's services and they can be referred to IPAS. We hope that, with the pact on migration in June, this work will no longer be with us but will instead be with the Department of justice. There is a move towards biometric testing from a younger age. The Department is able to access all the Eurodac and additional information that Tusla just does not have access to.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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My question came with all the compassion in the world. If you are 18 or 19, you are still very much a child in your own mind and in your parents' minds. I can only imagine what it would be like to be in a country facing war or different things. I completely understand why people would present as minors. I am glad that we are giving them the benefit of the doubt as much as we can. In the witnesses' opinion, is there a gap in policy around child protection? When you are born, the public health nurse comes to the house and that continues up to the age of two and a half. Is there a gap between that last visit from the public health nurse and the next requirement to engage with the State, the ECCE scheme? Even that is not fully a requirement. Is there a gap there? What are the witnesses' opinions on that? I know it is not exactly Tusla's remit but is there a gap there?
Ms Kate Duggan:
One of the positive developments we have seen in the last 12 months is the establishment of the home visiting service. That is being funded by our parent Department and rolled out through Tusla. The Children First interdepartmental group is now looking at mapping all of the services that are available and all of the access points where children have engagement with State services. Under legislation, children have to go to school by the age of six and there is also access to the ECCE scheme. We recognise that, in this process, there are periods of vulnerability. Many of us have seen that, during the Covid-19 pandemic, those periods of vulnerability as regards mandated persons having eyes on a child were exacerbated. The Children First interagency and interdepartmental group is certainly working on looking at that.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Last week, we had a lot of community and voluntary services in here. One of the phrases they used was that they felt like they were sometimes a dumping ground for Tusla. I know that is an awful phrase but they were acknowledging the level of referrals Tusla is getting and then referring on. There might have been a gap during the Covid pandemic when some of those services were closed but, even at the moment, there is a huge burden on people who have made referrals. Deputy Aird was not here for the announcement at the beginning. I ask him to keep his questions to policy concerns, if possible, and to avoid going into the specifics of any individual case.
William Aird (Laois, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Cathaoirleach for allowing me the opportunity to come in. I appreciate it because I am not a member of the committee. There are four questions I would like to put to the panel. Can the witnesses outline the safeguarding standards currently applied in special emergency accommodation including staffing ratios, vetting, oversight mechanisms and daily welfare checks? That is the first question. Can somebody please answer that?
Mr. Gerry Hone:
We probably have a more robust governance structure around special emergency arrangements than any of our providers in terms of our care processes. That is because we have had to step up those processes because we are worried about the lack of regulation. They are not regulated placements. We have national and regional groups providing oversight for these placements. The children in those placements are visited weekly. If they are under 12, they are visited daily by social care or social work staff. All of the staff vetting is checked and double-checked by Tusla's central compliance unit to make sure it is compliant. Not only that, but we will do spot checks in terms of video checks.
William Aird (Laois, Fine Gael)
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Could there be a spot check on a Sunday?
William Aird (Laois, Fine Gael)
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That is grand. That answers my question. I will ask my second question. What is the current average and maximum length of stay for children in special emergency accommodation? What factors contribute most to prolonged placements?
Ms Kate Duggan:
I have just given the current numbers. I will get them for the Deputy in a second. We have them in the pack. The child who has been in a special emergency arrangement the longest has been there for 36 months. Sometimes, it is deemed to be in the best interest of a child to stay in that single-occupancy centre in a particular location because they are doing better in terms of engaging in education or having reduced levels of distress or dysregulation. Over the course of a year, there may be 500 or 600 young people placed in a special emergency arrangement. On any one night, there will be 50 or 55. They go into that immediate place of safety and then move on. Where there are young-----
William Aird (Laois, Fine Gael)
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Do they get one-to-one tuition in education?
William Aird (Laois, Fine Gael)
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That is delivered by-----
William Aird (Laois, Fine Gael)
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I will ask my next question because I am conscious of time. What concrete steps are being taken to reduce the reliance on special emergency accommodation to ensure timely placement in regulated child-appropriate settings, including foster care, residential care or supported accommodation?
Ms Kate Duggan:
We have talked about the fact that we have over 5,600 children in care at the moment. Outside of special emergency arrangements, every one of those children is in a foster care placement. Outside of the 55 or 58 children who are in special emergency arrangements, every one of those is in foster care or a registered residential placement that is their home.
William Aird (Laois, Fine Gael)
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That is their home.
Ms Kate Duggan:
We are talking about a small number - 50, 55 or 58. We are seeing the foster care numbers reducing. There are some green shoots. In 2024, we approved more foster carers and fewer foster carers left. I am referring to Tusla foster carers. However, we are challenged. We talk about changing society. The number of foster carers available to us is reducing but we are very focused on trying to increase it. There are targeted campaigns for separated children.
William Aird (Laois, Fine Gael)
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That is disappointing, is it not?
William Aird (Laois, Fine Gael)
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I do not want to get into it but it is disappointing because I know many foster parents who did very good jobs.
Ms Kate Duggan:
We are seeing some progress. The other thing to say relates to a different demand. Because we have had to find 500 to 600 placements for separated children seeking international protection, there are providers in the registered market, either community and voluntary or private providers, that want to work with separated children's services rather than the mainstream services.
William Aird (Laois, Fine Gael)
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I will just ask my last question. What additional resources, legislative changes or interagency supports are required to ensure that special emergency accommodation becomes a genuinely short-term measure of last resort rather than a sustained feature of the system?
We talked about the 36 months or whatever.
Ms Kate Duggan:
The review of the childcare Act is the statutory basis for interagency co-operation. We talked just there about how we are now engaged with colleagues across other agencies. We are particularly challenged to place in a registered setting because when we talk about a registered setting, it is maybe a bungalow or a two-storey house that is a child’s home. If we place a child in that home, he may be very disruptive or may be violent or aggressive towards the other children and we cannot do that. We are looking for placements to support children with more complex needs or where more challenging behaviour is involved. We are working with the HSE to see whether we can pilot jointly-run facilities with better mental health and addiction supports so that we may be able to provide a better registered service for them.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Remaining members will have one minute each and then we will allow Ms Duggan to have a closing statement.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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With regard to the unaccompanied minors, Ms Duggan made a point about private providers wanting to come in to look after those children rather than using the foster care model. Why is that? Obviously, it is money. We cannot let money be the reason people get into foster parenting. It is the most difficult thing a person will ever do in life, but also the most rewarding. I do not like the residential model. I keep saying this. Is there any way Tusla can do an outreach to organisations that are very involved in communities, such as the GAA and the FAI and get involved with them to try to keep children within their communities? Is there any way it can look at that?
What happens if a compliant is made by a parent whose child has being abused or neglected in unregulated, privatised care? How is it investigated? Is the person removed from that setting immediately? What happens?
Ms Kate Duggan:
We attend GAA and community events, the ploughing championships and all of the different opportunities that we see across the country to try to promote fostering. As I said, we are starting to see some green shoots coming from that. We started a new initiative this year, which has proven really successful, where we employ experienced foster carers on contracts of 15 hours per week to be mentors and provide support to other foster carers, new foster carers in particular. There are a lot of good initiatives and we are happy to share any of those with the Senator.
Where a complaint is made about a child in any of our placements, whether that is in a foster care, special emergency arrangement, SEA, or residential setting, it is investigated in the same way under our protocols for allegations of abuse.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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Is the staff member, against whom an allegation is made, removed pending investigation or allowed to remain until the investigation is complete?
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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Great. The severity.
Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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Okay. I thank Ms Duggan.
Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Ms Duggan said that we need a new set of rules and resources when it comes to complex cases and what is required in that regard. Early intervention and maintaining the family unit is what it is all about. That is fine. We definitely need far more foster carers, but I cannot get away from the fact that there are certain circumstances where, for example, there are two siblings, one of whom was taken out of an unhealthy family setting at an early stage, while the other was taken out a lot later when there was a huge amount of damage done. I get that it is not an easy choice to make, but it is about how we get that piece absolutely right with regard to supporting the child, doing all we can and whether there is a possibility of a look-back facility so Tusla would not need to do what it is doing with regard to those welfare checks during Covid.
Ms Kate Duggan:
On individual cases, where there is a significant issue or concern, we do case reviews all the time. They are done either by the service or it can be deemed that it needs to be done by someone external to the service. I refer to where there is an incident of concern, where we hear something from HIQA or where there is a complaint or allegation. At the moment, there are four cases which were reviewed by the area, but because of different representations I received, I have asked for four independent reviews to be carried out of those four cases to ensure an assurance is given to me as CEO about the practice in those cases. We are looking to learn all the time. We want to be an organisation that is a learning organisation, so that if something goes wrong or someone sees an opportunity for improvement, we take it, learn from it and implement any recommendations.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Every member had their initial seven-minute slot as well as an additional three minutes, and we still have a tonne of questions we want to ask. If there are people at home today who have lost faith in Tusla, and Christmas is coming and a lot of people have made referrals who are worried, what does Ms Duggan want the people at home to know about the work Tusla is doing to improve child protection in this country?
Ms Kate Duggan:
The important message we have to get out there is that Tusla does lots of great work. We are supporting thousands and thousands of families in communities right across the country who are having very good outcomes. Our staff are working tirelessly to do that. We are working in partnership with community and voluntary sector organisations across the country that do absolutely tremendous work. For people with a concern, we need them to make that concern known to us. They need to refer it to us. We want those people to know that we will and are using the resources we have to the best effect to meet those who most need it.
Our reform programme is a transformational piece that is happening to make our services better and safer. We absolutely acknowledge the concerns that are there with regard to public trust and confidence. Some of the comments made today in support and recognition of our staff and the work they do are important in ensuring that people will trust and engage with our services. We are very open and honest about the challenges we face. We know that we are not able to do what we want for every child who is referred to us, but we are absolutely determined. We have been demonstrating incremental improvement across all of the measures, including increased staffing, better HIQA compliance and improved outcomes for children in education within our care system.
With regard to the children in our care, I received a Christmas card which was written to me recently by one of the children in our care who thanked us and all the people in Tusla for the difference we have made in his life. While we recognise the challenges we face, there is a cohort of young people today who are thriving in the care of Tusla.
Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I thank Ms Duggan and all of the witnesses for appearing before the committee today. I know some of our questions were robust and we are strict on time but it is important that everyone gets their opportunity to speak. It is important to get the good-news stories out there as well so that we get more foster carers and more social workers and people keep that confidence. I thank the witnesses for their engagement. The meeting stands adjourned until Thursday, 4 December 2025 at 9.30 a.m.