Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:

I agree that it was a major weakness. What we all learned in the first ten years of the process was the systemic nature of the abuse. We were all surprised and shocked by it. I am not sure anybody would have fully realised and known its scale. If one looks at what would have been the best way to do this, it would have been best to have a commission to look at the scale of the abuse and then to have a redress scheme in place. That technically would have been the best way to go, but, unfortunately, we do not live in a technical world but a real world. The population was getting older and there were appropriate demands for redress. There were many court cases and the Government made a call to provide redress without having the full knowledge.