Dr. Fergal Lynch:

No, they are not public hearings. I am referring to public law, that is, cases in which the State is involved, as opposed to private law, or cases in which the State has no direct involvement. I would like to clarify that from a policy perspective, the 1991 Act is all about public law, in other words, the State's involvement with children. That is why the guardian ad litem system which emerged from the legislation deals only with public cases, that is, public law, as opposed to private law cases. I can give the Chairman note on this. I should say the private law issue is one for the Department of Justice and Equality and I am not trying to pawn it off on that Department. We are in discussion with the Department about it. One of the observations that I think was given to us is that we need very much to join up the types of guardian ad litem or child law expert or child views expert or whoever that are put in place in the private system.

They need to be properly joined up and the regulation of them should be properly joined up. That is one of the things we are working towards. We are conscious there are different circumstances, different types of cases and probably different qualifications. For example, in a private law case involving access, one almost certainly would not need a social worker or a psychologist with five years' postgraduate experience whereas clearly one does in a care order type case. They are different types of cases and they are treated differently at the moment but I absolutely accept they need to be joined up.