Mr. Brian Lee:

Could I make a quick comment to reinforce some of the previous statements? We mentioned red flags and even when a red flag is brought to us, the process can take a considerable amount of time for us to fully enforce that up to de-registration. As mentioned before, that extra power to close a service immediately would be useful. I have been looking closely at the legislation underpinned by the Food Safety Authority and the Health and Safety Authority. It must be a very high bar to act to close down a service but I am looking at a threshold of a grave risk to children, whether there is an infrastructural problem with the building or the services' practices are so concerning that there might be an immediate risk to children, and it would be very useful to have that power to close such a service immediately rather than waiting 21 days, or even to build up the evidence to bring it to the 21 days. Even to get to the point of proposing to remove a service, one red flag will not be enough evidence to get that through if it is challenged in court. We must build a series of pieces of evidence to make a case to de-register a service. That is an important right for the services to have but now that we have operated this new regulatory regime for almost three years, it would be a very useful power to have. As Ms McNally said, the power would probably only be used on a very infrequent basis.