Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone and her department are to be severely criticised for handing back almost €60m in State funding last year when 6,000 children were not allocated a social worker, the Irish Examiner can reveal.

In the past, social services faced criticism for not moving fast enough to protect children from abuse or neglect, but figures for the babies taken from their family each year raise the question of whether the other extreme is now the case.

All children and teenagers leaving state care will be given specific aftercare plans in a bid to prevent recent “terrible tragedies” from being repeated under a new law set to be imposed before Christmas.

Even the National Association of Anti-Climaxes would have refused the Spring Statement entry to its ranks for fear of reducing their already disappointing reputation to an all time low in the minds of right thinking people, suggests political correspondent Shaun Connolly.