Migration and staffing among issues hampering Tusla’s work, PAC to hear

Tusla CEO Kate Duggan is expected to tell the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee  of the challenges it faces due to 'wider societal issues' including global migration, poverty, homelessness, domestic violence, and drugs. Picture: Brian Farrell 

Migration and staffing problems are two of the issues negatively affecting Tusla’s ability to provide its services adequately, an Oireachtas committee will hear today.

The chief executive of the agency, Kate Duggan, is set to tell the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that “wider societal issues” serve to “significantly impact” the demand for Tusla’s services.

Those issues include global migration, poverty, homelessness, domestic violence, and drugs, she is expected to say.

Tusla has been under increased fire in recent months over alleged gaps in its engagement with the families of vulnerable children such as Daniel Aruebose — a three-year-old boy who apparently died in 2021, but whose remains were only discovered last month.

In that case, the boy’s family had engaged with Tusla before the case file was closed in 2020 after Daniel was returned to his parents’ care.

Ms Duggan will tell the PAC that her agency has “publicly acknowledged the challenges we face in relation to an adequate supply of registered and regulated emergency and mainstream residential placements”.

Many of the challenges we are facing as an agency have been widely documented, and we have been transparent in discussing the increasing demand for all of our services. 

She will say the agency continues to face challenges with regard to providing special care beds to “the most vulnerable cohort of young people in our care”.

That situation has resulted due to staffing issues and inadequate step down arrangements or onward placements for young people with complex needs, thus delaying its timely discharge from special care.

Tusla was afforded €1.2bn in budget funding last October, an increase of €141m since 2024.

Ms Duggan is set to tell the PAC of the “significant improvements” recorded at the agency in the 18 months since its most recent appearance before the committee, via its implementation of an integrated reform programme.

Those improvements include the opening of a first new residential centre since 2018, with a further 11 centres to follow over the next 15 months.

She will say the number of foster carers employed by Tusla has been increased, with “the most social workers and social carer workers ever employed in the agency”.