Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

With respect, the letter came into the public domain via the Minister herself on foot of a Topical Issue matter which Deputy Rabbitte and I put down. I will not go into the modalities of that now. The fact is that the letter is in the public domain and was put there by the Minister herself.

Notwithstanding the child safeguarding statement and the Safety First legislation, Tusla is stating there is a job of work to be done in respect of compliance with the safety statement. That is the role of the professional staff in Scouting Ireland. I want to make a distinction between the role of the professional staff regarding their obligations. It is mapped on to the letter Tusla sent. In three – certainly two - of the cases, a professional person in Scouting Ireland made an intervention that could be deemed to be inappropriate in respect of whether it was compliant with the child safeguarding statement. We need to make the distinction between that and those episodes. One could argue that when those incidents occurred, that the volunteers who were on the ground came in straight away and notified the relevant person in charge of safeguarding. It was thereafter that there might have been a failure of process.

It is important to make the distinction that the volunteers on the ground, who go through the child protection training and receive their instructions from the professional staff as to their obligations, are without blemish in this instance.

I want an understanding of that dynamic from Tusla. If it acknowledges this distinction today, that will go some way towards assuaging the thousands of people who perceive that Tusla came down heavily on volunteers. One has to accept there is always risk but, in the main, the bulk of volunteers across the country are compliant and au faitwith their obligations as parents and volunteers.