Ulick Burke (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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Question 270: To ask the Minister for Health and Children the number of social workers to be appointed by the Health Service Executive west as promised in the implementation plan of the Ryan report; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [28172/10]

Barry Andrews (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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The Implementation Plan for the recommendations of the Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse was accepted by Government and published in July 2009. One of the key recommendations of the Implementation Plan is that an additional 270 additional social workers be recruited by the HSE between 2009 and 2011 in order that the HSE can fulfil its care planning and other statutory obligations to children in care. This is made possible as the approved Employment Control Framework for the HSE exempts social worker posts from the current moratorium on recruitment and the filling of vacancies. An amount of some €14m has been provided to the HSE in the current year to progress the implementation of the recommendations of the Ryan Commission.

One of the principal commitments in the Ryan Implementation Plan is the need to ensure that all children in care have an allocated social worker and a care plan. To this end, the Government has committed to filling 270 HSE social worker posts by the end of 2011 and to the frontloading of this initiative in 2010 with the filling of 200 posts.

This initiative is designed to target resources at front line services in order to ensure that the HSE fulfils its statutory obligations. The Oireachtas has voted that the necessary finance be provided and the filling of these posts has been exempted from the public service moratorium on recruitment and replacement of staff. There is an explicit commitment in the HSE Service Plan for 2010, as laid before the Oireachtas, that these posts will be filled.

I met with senior HSE representatives, including the Chairman of the Board, in recent weeks to review the progress being made in this regard. The HSE is in the process of interviewing approximately 400 candidates, in order to form a new panel of suitable candidates to fill all 200 posts in the current year. I am advised that 60 offers of employment issued from the HSE on foot of interviews which commenced in June, and that further offers are to be made this week. The 200 extra social workers will undertake a range of statutory child care functions, as per the recommendations of the Ryan Report. The recruitment of these additional social workers is critical in terms of progressing the Implementation Plan and in ensuring the allocation of a named social worker to each child in care and the to the availability of care plans for all of these children. I have been assured by the HSE that the matter is being afforded the highest priority both by the Board and by senior management.

The matter of the allocation of resources across particular HSE regions is a service matter for the HSE. In this regard I have requested that the HSE respond directly to the Deputy.