Mr. Mark Toland:

If I may give a little context, to be fair to the Garda Síochána, some of the recommendations in the original report were not its sole remit. They included other organisations. This is why we have included a recommendation in this report for a whole-of-government approach that needs to bring the key agencies together. The one that sticks out for me that was not implemented is child centres, specialist centres of excellence, where a child victim can be taken immediately to have medical services, to be interviewed and to have the therapeutic needs of the child dealt with. That needs more than the Garda Síochána to come together. We were disappointed to see some of the recommendations that were within the gift of the Garda either took a long time to implement or have not been implemented.

What I would say about the conclusion of this report is that for the first time the Minister has brought together an implementation group. That is different language. It has an independent chair bringing together those agencies to try to drive not only the recommendations from 2012, but also the new recommendations in this report. The Policing Authority has filled a gap in ensuring that our recommendations are implemented, and we were delighted that it received a previous report, Changing Policing in Ireland. There are some matters in this report that could go to the Policing Authority - that decision has not yet been made - but a different language is being spoken at present. A lot of work is going on to try to address some of these recommendations. The Minister for Children and Youth Affairs has been looking at children's centres. There is a lot of activity to try to address these recommendations, but we do not want to go back in two or three years and find that change has not happened.