Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)

The position of social worker is crucial to the child protection system. That is why, as a result of the Ryan report, 270 additional social workers were to be recruited, according to the recommendations of the report, in addition to the back-filling of existing posts in the system.

The Minister stated that 31 retired in February alone. Are we to take it that the other 14 who she mentioned in the context of the previous figure of 45 will now not be retiring and have not taken up the early retirement option? I dispute the Minister's categorisation of social worker posts. From an initial tally, I was looking at a figure of approximately 70 for the number of retirements from social worker posts of different categories of child protection.

The Minister mentioned that an additional 25% of social workers were recruited in recent years in the area of child protection. However, little of this has taken place since she entered Government. In fact, according to the Minister's figures, last year there were only ten additional social workers in posts at the end of year. We now see that 51 of the 62 who were to be hired last year are in posts and, alongside that, the Minister stated that 31 retired in February. We are moving from the previous policy of ring-fencing the number of social workers required for the system to divesting responsibility for that to the discretion of the HSE. It is a backward step.

The Minister should set a target for the number of social workers needed in the system in line with the policy followed to date. It is necessary if we are to ensure the remaining gaps in the child protection system are addressed.

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