Barry Andrews (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

With regard to these amendments, the HSE has the primary and statutory role in child protection in this country. What is envisaged is that the HSE would be the first point of contact. If an accredited agency would be able to carry out some of the procedures relating to assessment, they would do it through the HSE. The statutory procedure is there to allow this to happen but the HSE has the sole responsibility for child protection so the process must go through the executive initially.

If the language expresses "the Health Service Executive or an accredited agency", such an agency without any statutory authority should not be able to make decisions that are fundamentally about child protection, when the statutory authority in this regard is the HSE. That is one of the issues that will come up and we have discussed already how this would happen. Ultimately, the HSE must have a supervisory role and be able to stand over assessments made because of its obligation under the Child Care Act. It is one issue that must be considered.

The Senator asked whether money is an issue. Unfortunately, with issues relating to health, children and every other aspect of Government there are finite resources, particularly at the moment. The toughest part of politics is telling people we have put a certain amount of money in one area rather than another. Making such decisions and establishing these priorities is difficult but we stand over such decisions.

That we do not have an embargo with regard to social worker appointments is a very significant step forward and I was very pleased to receive that information from the HSE. Nevertheless, finite resources remain and there is no way we will be able to appoint thousands of social workers. We will be able to improve the position but it is not just about resources, it is about working in a different way, as the Senator mentioned. I did not need the Monageer report to underline this to me and that is why the task force on child protection services in the State, which is due to report at the end of this month, is ambitious in ensuring there is a standardised approach across the country with regard to child protection.

The HSE must be the statutory authority with regard to child protection. Ultimately, some of the functions relating to assessment can be given to another accredited body but there must be a supervisory role.