James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Tusla's plan will become very clear once it has submitted its business plan to me. We will consider it and it will be published. It will be very clear to every Deputy then.

I wish to reassure people that when we talk about high-priority cases, these are not children in any immediate risk. Anybody in immediate risk is looked after immediately. In other words - I have given this example previously - if a teacher is concerned about a child being abused that morning, before that child leaves school that day a social worker will be involved. We take this issue very seriously.

Where Tusla is in breach of its statutory obligations is with regard to children in care who are not considered to be at risk but do not have an allocated social worker, which is just not good enough. I and Tusla would love to be able to address all this in a year, but that is not possible. It has outlined a very practical three-year plan to address an issue that has been with society for decades. Until Deputy Shatter raised this matter in opposition, we were not even counting the number of children who were dying in care.

See this speech in context