Mr. John O'Driscoll:

In regard to the child care area, the remaining provisions of the Child Care (Amendment) Act 2015 will commence on 11 December. In preparation for that, in recent days a whole set of documents has been released for the information of every member of the Garda Síochána. These include the Children First national guidance for the protection and welfare of children of 2017, a joint working protocol for An Garda Síochána and Tusla, which was signed recently by myself and a senior member of Tusla, a new notification form for An Garda Síochána to the Child and Family Agency, a guide for the reporting of child protection and welfare concerns and a copy of Tusla best practice principles for organisations in developing Children First training programmes. In addition, at the last meeting of this committee that I attended, we spoke about an information leaflet which would be circulated to all members of the Garda Síochána. We have provided considerable extra information over and above what was initially planned and I have a draft of that which is now signed off and ready for circulation throughout the An Garda Síochána.

It is important to point out that, in his report, Professor Shannon commented positively on the fact we had made open to him in excess of 500,000 PULSE records and that it was only in a small number of cases that issues arose in respect of the manner in which the information was recorded in regard to particular cases where a section 12 removal was implemented. There is a high-level strategic committee I jointly chair with a senior member of personnel in Tusla. All of those issues and all of the recommendations arising from the Shannon report are being implemented and monitored at that level in both organisations.