Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)

The Minister outlined many challenges that must be addressed in regard to child protection services. I agree with her entirely in this regard. One of the challenges she has had to address in the past year is the appointment of the 60 additional social workers. According to her figures, ten of the 60 were in place at the end of 2011. My question is very specific - how many social workers does she plan to have in place by the end of 2012? She stated the number for the end of 2011 was 2,442. What will the equivalent figure be at the end of 2012?

I was very disappointed to hear the Minister state in her earlier contributions on the retirement of social workers that, despite the Ryan report recommendation to engage in a process of recruiting social workers, she did not outline any plan as to how the staff will be replaced. She stated it will be the task of the HSE to decide whether each should be replaced. This is totally in contradiction with the recent work on trying to increase the number of social workers. From my assessment of the HSE figures, there were 71 social workers to leave. The Minister's number is lower. I would be interested in knowing which of the 71 staff would not be regarded as being at the front line by the Minister. Will the Minister state specifically how many social workers in the area of child protection will be in place at the end of 2012? There were 2,442 at the end of December 2011.

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