Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the Minister's answer but I am going back to last September when the chief executive officer, Mr. Fred McBride, suspected that €40.6 million would be insufficient to introduce mandatory reporting and a host of other services. When he appeared before the Oireachtas committee he said that mandatory reporting was going to increase Tusla's workload by 150%. Month on month we see HIQA reports where it has gone into various centres and we see the basic fundamentals on Garda vetting and so on are not up to scratch. We see also that there is a lack of engagement of social workers. I am not as fully convinced as the Minister, but she has the Department to best advise her. I do not believe that Tusla has the resources.

Another concern is Tusla's workforce plan. When will we have a timeline on a workforce plan given that more than €700 million is going into that operation? I would like to see how this funding is being spent and how it plans to spend it going into the next budget. Mandatory reporting is up 20% since it was introduced last year.

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