Mr. Tony O'Brien:

Having spoken to them, my view is that if they had not tried to do a tailored response and if they had not tried to do the right thing, this particular issue would never have arisen. They were moving from a standardised letter with an apology in it, which I do not think was a sufficient apology but nonetheless included an apology and which would have satisfied the expectations that were reflected in the document that was sent to the committee on 10 December 2015. The timetabling around this was influenced by the decision of the Freedom of Information Commissioner, the expiration of the appeal period and the timing of the meeting. There was a strong desire on the part of the social care division to get that part of the report that was approved to be released into the public domain to the committee by that date. A significant level of effort had been made to ensure the individuals involved and their families - there were 47 families, 44 of whom could be contacted - were made aware in advance of release that it could lead to some parts of this information coming into the public domain. The social care division made a decision that an apology should be included in that letter. It was in the case of 43. The decision was made locally in the case of the person to whom we are referring to as Grace that this should be done in a different way. That in essence is where it went wrong.