Catherine Noone (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. McBride for attending in such an expeditious manner before the committee and for his apology, which I believe is sincere but which I would have to say is cold comfort to the affected family in the case we are all aware of but on which we cannot go into the specifics.

In his opening statement, Mr. McBride referred to the level of regulation and oversight in Tusla, both internal and external, but in terms of what happened recently, and other people have spoken about confidence in the organisation, it speaks to another situation. Everybody here, and the public at large, needs reassurance from Mr. McBride on the procedures that have been set up even in the interim. Whatever about the tribunal, there are ongoing cases of a very serious nature in the interim. I am sure that every person involved in a case being dealt with by Tusla would be concerned to know it is being dealt with in the appropriate manner.

To err is human. My background is in medical negligence and it is the only area I can think of to compare this to because a doctor can do something, with the best intent, to take care of a patient but the end result can be that somebody is seriously affected or even die. In those cases, the doctors have the full rigours of the law to face, and often there are huge financial payouts etc.

The mind boggles as to this error and how it could have occurred. We cannot go into specifics but I would make the comment that regardless of whether it was a copy and paste error, all of us find it very difficult to believe.