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

11 o’clock

These are serious issues. I share the Deputy's concerns. How Tusla will assure itself, and me, that the practice on the ground is being improved is an important question. A key aspect of Tusla's management team is quality assurance. It is responsible for conducting internal monitoring and audit exercises of the different aspects of the agency's work. That includes monitoring, auditing, child protection practices to check for consistency of policy, application in social work practice and measuring the quality of services being delivered. The people doing the quality assurance activity, including analysing data received from all the 17 areas, are independent of the chief operations officer and report directly to the CEO. As I understand it, Tusla has been provided with additional resources to strengthen its role and is continuing to implement that.

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