Gardaí: Tusla can take five months to contact parties

Gardaí have said it is not unusual for Tusla to take five months from the date of a referral in a child welfare case before making contact with the parties involved, with one senior officer citing the workload of social workers as the main reason.

The comments were made in the course of a hearing in which a man faced a charge of assault against his former partner and where the alleged altercation was said to have occurred in front of the couple’s children.

Garda Sean O’Connor told Judge John King that he took a statement from the woman in the case last September, two days after the alleged assault, and had categorised it as alleged emotional abuse, with a related child-welfare concern also logged, because it was alleged to have occurred in front of the children.

A referral was then made to the Child and Family Agency as per statutory obligations and the garda was asked if it was unusual that between September and February there was no Tusla contact. He said it was not: “It does take quite a long time for Tusla to contact the parties involved.”

Defence solicitor Pat Horan said it was not likely that Tusla would close a case without speaking to the children involved, describing such a scenario as “completely implausible”.

He later argued it was “beyond belief” that Tusla would close a case file — as it did in this case — two days before the commencement on criminal proceedings.

However, Insp David Callaghan said: “I can give you a number of examples where they have closed it beforehand.”

Insp Callaghan told the sitting of Bandon District Court:

“A clear sign of of the workload that Tusla have is that February 2019 is the first contact with either party.”

Having heard all the evidence, Judge King Dismissed the charge against the man.

Tusla has pointed to its efforts over the past year to recruit and retain more social workers and has said it has made some progress.

Its most recent monthly report, for March, shows a small fall in the number of low- and medium-priority cases awaiting allocation to a social worker, while the number of referrals and mandated reports received by Tusla were higher than a year ago.