Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses before us today. I want to start by saying that I have much sympathy for the predicament that parents find themselves in at present, particularly those parents whose children are attending some of these facilities as we speak and who are absolutely and utterly conflicted about sending their children to these facilities but have no other choice other than to go back to these facilities because they have no alternative arrangements. Such parents seek clarity from us as to whether the interactions we are having today will provide some degree of confidence to those parents. As a parent, if my child were in any of those facilities and I had no choice but to send my child there, I would be racked with guilt, feeling ambivalent about what I should be doing and I know for a fact that some of the children have been withdrawn from such facilities because I have been talking to some of the parents of those children. I am not sure I have heard anything today that would give me crumbs of confidence or give those parents grounds for confidence. I wanted to make that point at the very start.

Correct me if I am wrong, but everything I have heard today points back to Tusla saying it is reverting to Children First guidelines. Earlier, the acting chief executive stated:

It is important to state in the clearest terms possible, however, that Tusla’s early years inspectorate had no evidence of the serious child protection concerns or the high degree of serious non-compliance with standards that was shown in the RTÉ programme. Indeed, the behaviours displayed are unlikely ever to be evident during an inspection and we rely on good governance practice and appropriate mandatory reporting under Children First or through Tusla’s unsolicited information office for the notification of child protection concerns.

To parse the language, Mr. Smyth was saying that if people do not report child protection concerns to Tusla within the facilities themselves, as childcare workers, Tusla has no way of knowing what is going on. Is that correct?