Ms Frances Spillane:

Sorry, Chairman. I would have concerns that if we were to introduce mandatory reporting from day one, that it could be very difficult. There are issues about the threshold for reporting that come to the fore with management reporting. One has to be extremely precise as to what is the threshold for this compulsory reporting. That has been an issue in the area of children, so in fact the bar, as I understand it, has been set quite high in terms of mandatory reporting. There is experience from other jurisdictions in the area of children, and Senator Kelleher is aware of this. One can get caught up in the administration, reporting, filling in of forms and all that, so one has to be very careful one comes up with something pragmatic.

When I talked about the guidelines in the area of children, another option would be to have very clear guidelines and to try to explain to people when they should to report. That is an area where we do not have as much experience and that is something that is going to come through from the review of safeguarding that the HSE is doing. I think it will be very helpful to us.