Professor Nick Hardwick:

Let me be really clear. One of the things I am really clear about is the quality of our methodology. The more serious some of the concerns we identified were, the more care we took. We used the classic multiple evidence triangulation process. We looked at data, at what people were saying to us, at what the boys were saying to us and at what the staff were saying to us. We pulled the evidence and looked at what we were observing. Some of the stuff we saw with our own eyes. We are very confident about the accuracy of our report which is why at the end, they did not raise any significant issues of factual accuracy. We are very clear about the accuracy of what we said. If that came as a shock to people, that is revealing and is an issue that Oberstown needs to address. Why did it not know this stuff, if it did not know it? It is not a reflection on our report or on our methodology.