The HSE has denied claims by Senator Fidelma Healy Eames that it discriminates against young, female social workers at the interview stage because of concerns about maternity leave.

"A senior, reliable source in HSE West has confirmed to me that female social workers, who are on maternity leave, are currently not being replaced during their leave of absence," said Senator Healy Eames.

"However, this was not always the case. At present there are two maternity posts that have been left vacant with one post having just been filled after much campaigning from staff. This is leading to discrimination against young, female social workers at interview," she alleged.

"The distribution of social workers in the West is already uneven with Sligo/ Leitrim having 6.5 staff per 10,000 population and Galway, with the worst ratio nationally, having just 2.5 staff per 10,000 population. Child protection services are under serious strain and there is no doubt that the children of Galway are suffering as a result of care staff not being able to cope with the caseload.

"My source in HSE West tells me that two weeks ago there were 50 cases of serious child neglect that had been reported by the Gardaí that had not been assessed, a staggering 15 of which had no prior level of assessment carried out to assess the gravity of the situation. Galway City child protection services had an overwhelming 1,586 new referrals in 2007, an increase of 50 per cent on the previous year.

"Waiting times for child protection assessment in Galway is currently five to six weeks. Resources are already stretched to capacity with an estimated additional five social workers urgently needed to deal with the current caseload. If the situation is allowed to continue whereby maternity posts are left unfilled, the future for children in Galway looks extremely bleak," she concluded.

In response to Senator Healy Eames's comments, HSE West said that Galway city and county Primary Community and Continuing Care (PCCC) has a total of 4,436 whole-time equivalent Social Work posts and that at the moment there is one maternity leave vacancy in child protection.

"Across Galway, we have a highly developed system of family support eg Springboard, the Gaf youth cafe, Neighbourhood Youth Projects and we have the lowest number of children in care in the country," said the HSE West statement.

It went on to detail that there is a designated intake team of Social Workers who deal with all child protection referrals as they come in. "We operate a duty system in all our larger health centres in the county to deal with all child protection issues as they arise locally."

HSE West has rejected any suggestion that there is discrimination against young, female social workers at interview. "This would obviously be in clear breach of equality legislation. If Senator Healy Eames has any evidence of this we would ask her to provide us with it as this is something we would take extremely seriously."

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