Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The task force recommended that the new agency have a board structure, although it made a number of recommendations regarding the powers of the Minister and a strengthened role for the Department in undertaking policy development and performance oversight vis-à-vis the new agency. We will have an opportunity to discuss that issue when I bring the legislation to the House.

The core services consist of the child and family support services in the Health Service Executive, and the work done by the Family Support Agency and the education and welfare services. On the areas that must have a strong relationship with the child and family support agency - some of them should be directly under it - I am not sure what the transition point might be for them, but going on the very good work done by the task force we should examine, for example, some public health nursing services that could come directly under the new agency, although not all of them. I envisage public health nurses remaining where they are at present, but I would like to see strong interaction because many of them have direct contact with families. Speech and language therapy services, child and adolescent mental health services, Garda youth diversion projects and the psychology services were examined in the task force report. As I stated in reply to Deputy Murphy, we need to examine the organisation of some of these services and how they can best deliver to the families who need them.

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