Mr. Tony O'Brien:

As the Chairman stated, any follow-up information will come through the committee and all members will have access to it. I am in complete agreement with Senator Mary Moran in that none of the comments I made was intended or could be construed to suggest any of the behaviour witnessed on the television programme was the result of a lack of staff or resources in bungalow 3. Certainly, there is no excuse of that kind that could be presented. The unit was well staffed. To put it frankly, if people had enough time to abuse patients, they certainly had enough time to look after them. We all saw that with our own eyes.

I thank Deputy Doherty for her expression of confidence. We certainly intend to apply throughout the health service the lessons learned from this instance and to engage in an entirely new way. Part of this is the process that started today. We will keep the committee posted on how that develops. We intend to do this in a very public and transparent way.

One of the well-known disability advocates, Mr. Martin Naughton, who was with us today, used a very telling expression that we embraced. He said he would seek to keep our feet to the fire in relation to his monitoring of this. We said we hoped he would.