Children in Care
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-23
============================================================

Norma Foley (FF), Kerry

To be clear, the additional funding Tusla was given this year allowed it to open an additional 38 residential care placements in 2025, with a prediction that a further 47 will be provided in 2026-27, which gives a total over the two years of 85. The overall budget increase will help Tusla to increase the overall availability of places for children in need to more than 800. Notwithstanding that, I hear the Deputy's point regarding special emergency arrangements being unregulated. I want to be clear that Tusla has done an awful lot of work to ensure all of those SEAs are now regulated. They are either directly under the remit of Tusla itself or are fully regulated themselves.
We are very conscious of the excellent work that is done by the voluntary sector. We want to ensure it continues doing that work. I will go into the budget mindful of the need to again seek the maximum funding possible for Tusla to allow it to support everything that falls within its remit, including the voluntary sector in this instance.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-23/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:06+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-23