Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. He is right that there are a significant number of Irish social work graduates in the UK, Australia and other jurisdictions. Tusla has been particularly targeting those in the UK, using professional journals and so on as part of its advertising campaign. Tusla has had real success and 2020 was the first year for a long time that the net number of incoming social workers was greater than the number of those exiting, which is because of that conversion. It was taking a lot of agency staff and giving them permanent or full-time contracts, which was obviously very attractive to many graduates. The scheme it has brought in this year, directly targeting fresh graduates coming out of the universities and offering them a contract immediately, again, even if it is only for a number of years, is very attractive to get that initial element of experience.

Of course, we have been happy to support Tusla. The Government gave Tusla very significant support last year, with an additional €66 million in funding, the biggest bump in funding it had received since the organisation’s foundation. That was a recognition, particularly last year, that Tusla needed support because it is dealing with the most vulnerable children, whether it is children in residential care or children in foster care, as the Deputy has identified.

The Deputy is right to raise this issue. Whether it is 72 children in 2019 or 30 in 2020, it is still too many, although it is good to see the numbers are coming down. HIQA has accepted Tusla's action plan in respect of Carlow, Kilkenny and south Tipperary. We will get direct responses to the Deputy on those issue issues so we can, hopefully, see a continuing fall in the number of unallocated cases.

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