A key pledge by the Health Service Executive (HSE) to bolster child protection by hiring extra social workers has been broken.

On foot of recommendations made in the Ryan Report into institutional abuse, the HSE said it would appoint 60 additional social workers this year to strengthen child protection services. However, none of these additional posts have been filled, the Irish Times has reported today.

And in a statement issued last night, the HSE confirmed that none of the additional social workers due to be hired this year were “in post” and was unable to say if they would be in place by the end of this year.

The revelation comes after it emerged that up to 35 young people who were known to the HSE’s child protection services died over the past 18 months.

Despite a recruitment freeze announced last July due to cuts, the HSE has consistently maintained there is no “restriction on the appointment of posts” of social workers.

Last month, the Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald told the Dáil the additional social work appointments were “always a priority” and were at various stages of recruitment process.

She said: “Some have had contracts issued, posts have been accepted awaiting clearance, and others are at various other stages in the recruitment process.”

In a statement to The Irish Times yesterday, the HSE confirmed that none of the planned additional social workers were in place.

It said: “While the pause is in effect the HSE will continue to process, screen and panel applications for posts as set out in the HSE service plan to ensure that successful applicants can take up their positions as quickly as possible, once the recruitment pause ends.”

The HSE was not able to say when this freeze on recruitment would end. The executive said it hired 200 additional social workers last year, in line with the Ryan report recommendations.

On Tuesday, it emerged that 35 children and teenagers known to the HSE had died since March of last year.

It was also revealed that were 16 serious incidents involving children or adolescents known to the HSE over the same time period.

Earlier this week the independent chair of a group established to review deaths and serious incidents involving children known to social services expressed concern about failures in the system.

Dr Helen Buckley of Trinity College Dublin, the chair of the National Review Panel, criticised the HSE for numerous failures which had led to sub-standard care in some cases.

Dr Buckley said the health executive was responsible for failing to have a standardised method to assess the needs of children and young people who come to the attention of social services.

There was a lack of co-operation between different agencies responsible for providing services to children at risk, she said.

In March 2010, the Health Information and Quality Authority issued directions to the HSE to review all serious incidents including deaths in care and detention.

A national review team was set-up and since then the HSE must notify HIQA of all deaths and serious incidents within 48 hours.

Concern over deaths in HSE care arose last year, when it emerged that some 200 minors had died in HSE care, or in contact with HSE care services in the past decade..

Last year, a spokesperson for a leading children’s charity said that the HSE’s child protection system was “not fit for purpose”.

Norah Gibbons, head of advocacy at children’s charity Barnardos told the McGill Summer School that the HSE showed “a lack of leadership, a lack of clear national standards, a lack of a clear assessment model and no national agreement on the threshold we as a nation want to set in respect of protecting our children.”

A recent report by the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) showed that some children were being placed by the HSE with foster parents who were not properly vetted.

The report into the HSE in Dublin found “significant deficiencies in the vetting, assessment and approval of carers, particularly relative carers” and “serious concerns in relation to child protection practices and the assessment of child protection concerns”.