Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The report does not deal with matters before the disclosures tribunal. It was, however, prompted by issues being dealt with by the tribunal. The Government accepts the report that was approved by the Cabinet today. Tusla accepts the report which will be implemented in full and its representatives will be before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Children and Youth Affairs this week to account for it. I commend the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Katharine Zappone, for commissioning the report in the first place and HIQA for carrying it out.

As a Government and a society, we have many obligations and responsibilities towards our youngest and most vulnerable citizens, paramount among which is ensuring they are not subject to abuse, whether sexual, physical, emotional or neglect. Therefore, having a properly functioning child protection system is a concern for us all, which is why the report was commissioned. I appreciate that it was published in the past hour or so and that Deputies have not yet a had a proper chance to read or study it, but in respect of recruitment and resources, it is important to quote from the report. It states there was abundant evidence of considerable financial investment that the Department of Children and Youth Affairs and Tusla's board and executive had made in staff recruitment and training and developing a more service demand model of staff allocation across its service. While it does raise issues surrounding the difficulty in recruiting and retaining social workers, the report acknowledges in black and white the fact that there is abundant evidence of considerable financial investment made by the Government and the agency in staff recruitment. Tusla's Exchequer funding for this year is €753 million, a €14 million increase on the figure for last year, a considerable increase by any measure.

The Deputy asked what specific actions were being taken or which had already been initiated or set in train. The Minister has directed Tusla to produce an action plan as recommended by HIQA setting out the steps required to implement the recommendations, together with clear timelines for doing exactly this. She is also going to appoint an independent expert quality assurance and oversight group to drive and monitor implementation in order that we will know what is happening. The group will publish regular updates on its work. The Minister has also advised that, in line with HIQA's report, she is prioritising several major initiatives to reform the way Tusla and An Garda Síochána deal with historical allegations of child sexual abuse and to support Tusla's workforce needs by creating formal career path mechanisms for students and graduates. She will meet the board of Tusla in the coming days. Many of the actions needed to implement the report's findings were already under way at the time the investigation was started and I might be able to go through them in my next time slot.

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