John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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317. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the number of educational welfare officers employed by Tusla in each county, in tabular form; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [27505/25]

John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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316. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the number of educational welfare officers employed by Tusla in Wicklow; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [27504/25]

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 317 and 316 together.

Tusla Education Support Service (TESS), which includes the statutory Educational Welfare Service (EWS), is under the remit of my department since 2021.

The primary role of the EWS is to ensure that every child either attends school regularly or otherwise receives a certain minimum education; to ensure and secure every child’s entitlement to education. Educational Welfare Officers (EWOs) are based throughout the country and work with children, young people and their families who are experiencing difficulty with school attendance; this is done through, home visits, educational welfare conferences and collaboratively working with different agencies. The main priority of the work is around the educational welfare of children and young people and to ensure that concerns around attendance are addressed before attendance becomes a crisis issue.

The number of EWOs has increased significantly since 2021. Recently TESS has restructured into six regions, based on child population and fully aligned to the Tusla regions. EWOs are assigned to schools, not to counties and therefore assignments may cut across county boundaries. There is also flexibility in the assignment of EWOs to schools to ensure an effective and efficient service across the country.

Currently there are 159 EWO WTE’s across the six TESS regions. Each TESS region is supported by a Regional Manager. There are 21 teams operating across the six regions and each is supported by a Senior Educational Welfare Officer and a business support team.

Included in the 159 EWO whole time equivalents are 23 EWOs who provide services to the most vulnerable children and young people including children in care and children living in homeless accommodation. An additional 5 temporary EWO posts are also approved to trial innovative approaches to supporting attendance in all schools in 2025.

A national EWO recruitment campaign took place in February 2025 from which all vacant EWO posts are currently being filled with an additional post for Co. Wicklow. Following service realignment there are now four EWO WTE’s allocated to Co. Wicklow. Of these there is one vacant post, currently onboarding following a successful recruitment campaign.

The breakdown of EWO's assigned to each county is listed in the following table: