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

It is very important that people feel free to make those complaints. As the Deputy knows, whenever there is an issue in terms of the engagement of Tusla with the relationship between a parent and child, it does create an element of stress. The fact that there are a growing number of complaints means that people feel that even if they have an issue, they need not worry about retaliation or whatever. They should feel the systems are robust enough to allow them to make a complaint and get their issue sorted.

The Deputy rightly made the point that we have issues in terms of social workers, and just like we are working on it in terms of therapists for the CDNTs we are working to try to retain and recruit more social workers. While that is happening, there will be parents who feel like that, particularly if their child has moved between a number of social workers. We all know building that relationship is so important. It is absolutely legitimate that parents would flag their concerns. We do have a reasonably robust process in place at the moment.

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