Recently the Policing Authority produced its report, Oversight of Policing Response to Child Sexual Abuse 2023. To quote the report, "The area of interagency working is a key area where continuing challenges present." The report highlights the need for enhancing multi-agency collaboration at a strategic level and at an operational level. The most straightforward way of doing this is co-locating duty social workers from Tusla into Garda divisional protective services units, DPSUs. These units are rolled out across every Garda division and are working excellently. The secondment of duty social workers from Tusla to those units and that co-location will ensure that multi-agency collaboration is happening from the ground up in an organic way. The roll-out of the Barnahus model is welcome but it is not enough as it is limited to Dublin, Cork and Galway. This is an issue right across the country and we need to see a piloting of co-location of duty social workers in DPSUs.

I thank the Deputy for raising the issue in a constructive way with a proposal to deal with the issue. I could not agree more that multi-agency working is essential. One of the great problems and challenges in public services is the silo mentality and the absence of a genuine cross-agency and multiple agency co-operation approach. I will refer the matter to the Minister for Justice and the Minister for children to see if the Deputy's ideas can be activated.