Professor Barry Goldson:

The processes of consultation and communication, particularly with the chair and director, kicked in before we started the operational review. There was a day-long meeting before we started the review where we discussed how we would address it. Members will be aware that we visited Oberstown on two occasions. Each time, at the beginning and end of the meetings, we met the chair and director. At the beginning, we would explain what we intended to do during the period of the visit, and at the end, we would share preliminary findings and observations. The principal message we received was that nothing that we had found was particularly surprising. We came across some very concerning issues, but the director and the chair assured us that they were aware of them and that they were being addressed.

We working to a fairly compressed timeframe.

When we prepared the first draft of the report, that was submitted to the director and the chair, and we invited their comments. We had a day-long meeting in Liverpool with all the data set out in our written documentation. We had a day-long meeting in Liverpool with both the chair and the director in which we went through and discussed, in close detail, the report after which they submitted their comments. We took account of those comments and provided the second draft of the report. We had a further day-long meeting with the chair of the Oberstown board of management to discuss those.

At the end of that process - this is the second draft - we prepared our final report. To accompany our final report, we also submitted to the chair and the director very detailed written documents explaining, in forensic detail, precisely how we had taken account of the issues that they had raised with us. There were some relatively minor factual inaccuracies, which one might expect in a process. They were put right and we addressed every single other point. That is not to say we revised the report in precisely the way that was being asked of us because we were there as independent reviewers. We were not there to collude with the process at Oberstown and those views but there was some divergence in our views.