Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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966. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the projected cost in 2017 of eliminating the waiting lists for child social workers and providing a dedicated social worker to every child in State care. [27512/16]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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At the end of 2015, the Child and Family Agency, Tusla developed a three-year plan which identified the requirement for additional resources to meet critical service concerns including targeted funding to address the findings of a national review of child welfare and protection cases awaiting allocation to a social worker. The plan to address unallocated cases involves increasing staffing levels including the recruitment of multi disciplinary teams to contribute to the delivery of a more effective child welfare and protection service, for example, family support workers, social care workers and business support personnel.

Funding requirements and how resources should be prioritised and allocated across each area of Government spending are considered as part of the annual estimates cycle and budgetary process. It would be inappropriate for me to comment at this time on any future decisions that may be taken by Government in the context of Budget 2017 on the expenditure allocations for programmes and services falling within the Vote of my Department. However, my objective will be to realise funding allocations that reflect expenditure policy priorities and that sufficient resources are directed towards those areas of greatest impact on children and young people.