Mr. Cormac Quinlan:

Mandatory reporting was introduced because there was a concern about people failing to report child protection and abuse matters. It is important that everyone recognises their responsibility to do that and good information allows us to take the right steps to protect children. There is no doubt the RTÉ programme highlighted a very significant matter of public interest in terms of the regulation of preschool services and this will lead to increased powers. However, that function should never outweigh the personal and professional responsibility to protect a child from harm at the point of time when that harm is identified. The behaviour we saw in this case was of immediate concern and it required an immediate response. If we had received standard reporting forms under the Children First guidelines at the time the incidents were observed, it would have allowed us to intervene on the basis of an immediate risk from a child protection and welfare perspective. Parents would have been informed and could have then made an informed choice as to whether they wanted their children to be in that service or not. There would have been ongoing engagement with the regulatory services and measures could have been taken to ensure the person causing harm was not in contact with the children, and we could have informed the Garda Síochána of the suspected abuse. The protection of children must come before any public interest perspective. We have not received specific information on a specific child but we are reviewing the footage to allow us to do that.