Children’s Minister Frances Fitzgerald (pictured) has admitted that thousands of children have to wait months for social workers to look into in their cases.

Many of these children could be suffering from neglect, according to The Irish Independent.  

The figures, disclosed by Ms Fitzgerald, show that more than 4,100 children who were assessed by the HSE as needing intervention had to wait more than three months for a social work team to get to them, the Irish Independent reports.

In one area, children were left waiting more than a year to have a dedicated social worker allocated to them.

Child protection experts have warned that many of these children will go on to offend because the State is failing to act early enough to keep them out of the court system.

The disclosure of the figures by Ms Fitzgerald came as the group representing frontline social workers blamed a chronic shortage of staff for the delays.

The Irish Association of Social Workers (IASW), in a briefing document prepared for the Minister and a group of TDs, claimed that most social work teams were operating at between 60pc and 70pc of their staffing complement.

The knock-on effect of the staff shortages was illustrated in a letter from Ms Fitzgerald to Independent TD Roisin Shortall, in which the minister outlined lengthy delays in tackling cases.

Ms Fitzgerald said the most recent figures available from the HSE, from December 2012, showed that of 7,860 cases nationally where children had been screened and assessed:

* 23pc were waiting up to a month for the allocation of a social work team.

* 24pc were waiting between one and three months.

* 53pc were waiting for more than three months.

The children waiting more than three months were “not deemed to be at risk of abuse”, but were “in need of an intervention for their ongoing welfare”, Ms Fitzgerald said.

However, social workers said these could include quite serious cases of children who were neglected through undernourishment or lack of parental supervision.

IASW chair Ineke Durville said the situation was more acute in some areas.

In Dublin north west – the north inner city, Cabra, Finglas, Blanchardstown and Mulhuddart – there are more than 300 “at-risk” children waiting to be allocated a social worker.

The personnel shortage is also holding up the recruitment of foster parents, with hundreds of prospective foster carers facing delays in being assessed.

Ms Durville said that because of staff shortages, social workers were constantly reprioritising the most urgent cases, while others they had been dealing with received less attention.

And she voiced fears that another Roscommon case – where two parents were able to abuse their children for several years, even though the HSE was involved with the family – could happen again.

Ms Fitzgerald said most of the cases where there was a delay were ones where children had “a welfare need” rather than being at risk of abuse.

She said work was under way by the incoming Children and Family Agency, which would take over child protection and welfare services currently operated by the HSE, to develop a “more responsive system”.

However, Ms Shortall said the staff shortages were helping to create “a vicious circle” where overworked social workers were going sick, leaving colleagues with even bigger workloads.

“Because of the juggling the social workers have to do, only the really seriously at-risk kids get a service, while others who need their help fall down the list of priorities,” she said.