Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

My reference to the sky not falling in referred to the system. The system did not crash. With regard to the unallocated cases, I have already acknowledged that where there are cases of children and families not being assigned a social worker, it does not mean that social workers are not communicating with them. Duty social work teams are ensuring those families are being communicated with regularly and ensuring there is no risk to children. I have confidence in that.

Of course, I will be looking for more resources for Tusla for a number of our priorities. As I have tried to describe in answers to other questions, it is a real challenge to get social workers in order to reduce those unallocated cases but even with the increase in referrals, the trend in respect of the number of unallocated cases is going down. This does not necessarily make a family that has not been allocated a social worker feel any better about it. I appreciate this and I have empathy. We are, however, looking at the overall trend going down. At the same time, we need to recruit more. We have had a draft of the workforce plan. Our officials are discussing this and are working very closely on it so that it meets all of the requirements, which I have already identified.

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