Ms Linda Creamer:

Initially, we did not have concerns. In respect of the Children First information officers beginning to do their work, we must remember the context, as Mr. Smyth has already noted. This came out of the retrospective work. Scouting Ireland is working very closely with us and An Garda Síochána in terms of retrospective cases. Given the fact that an independent review of Scouting Ireland commissioned by the Minister was published in June 2018 and the serious concerns within that review about processes and how complaints were managed, the Children First information officers were urgently allocated to work with Scouting Ireland to bring the policies and procedures up to date. In our view, they were not up to date in terms of Children First in 2015 or in terms of guidance and practice.

This guidance and practice is there for all organisations that are producing their safeguarding statements and their policies and procedures. Within that, there is guidance over ratios when travelling away with children, supervision, etc. That is all there.

We felt an urgency to get their attention, given the report that we had last year and given the concerns that we had in the six referrals. There were 21 referrals altogether involving 13 separate instances. Six of those, including one in the recent helpline, are very concerning, and the impact on those young people can be quite significant at an emotional level. That is why it was urgent to meet.

When we met on 8 January, a plan was agreed. However, it took four weeks for them to come back and we had to write to the CEO because the CEO, under Children First, is responsible. The CEO is the person who must delegate this work. That is why we would go and talk to the CEO. It is standard that we would talk to the CEO or that we would go in to the board and make a presentation to bring it up to scratch.

What we have asked for is the implementation plan of the safeguarding statement. That is where the difficulties are because there are lots of blanks in that and there are lots of matters on hold. Since we met on Thursday last, I understand there is a more up-to-date plan. The team is meeting them tomorrow in terms of getting more up to date. Given the concerns that these cases involve young people late at night in fields, and they are very serious allegations, we felt an urgency. We were not getting this response as quickly as we wanted and hence we wrote to the CEO.