Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

We do not want an inspectorate that will be bogged down in paperwork, with social workers afraid to do anything apart from filling in forms while they phone their lawyers about how their positions should be protected, rather than the children, the elderly or disabled people they are supposed to be looking after. We know what works and what does not. It will be challenging for the Minister to show us that this inspectorate will genuinely replicate somebody like Nuala O'Loan in the North of Ireland, rather than a little whimpering organisation that will be the HSE's lap-dog.

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