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

That is the current hope and intention of Tusla and its CEO. We have had exchanges as well on the issue of agency staff. The CEO conducted an introductory engagement with Fórsa last week during which he mentioned his hope of a once-off blanket agency conversion, which received a very positive response. A formal meeting with Fórsa and the human resources, HR, department of Tusla is scheduled early next week to take a look at exploring the detail of beginning a major conversion process. Tusla currently has 677 agency staff engaged. While we cannot predict the outcome, I understand from the CEO that he is hopeful that there will be a significant result from the initial conversion work. This would be a significant change and many of the technical details and aspects of that kind of process of change will have to be interrogated and agreed with other Departments as well.

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