Mr. Brian Lee:

In terms of any wriggle room in the context of a successful prosecution under the current regulations, as far as I am concerned, from a regulator's point of view, the answer is "No", but it has not been tested in the courts. Someone has not challenged it because it has not got to that space. I cannot predict that into the future.

In terms of the new legislation, we had a very productive meeting with the Department. The challenge is that there needs to be primary and secondary legislative changes, and that does take a bit more time. We need to make sure we have all the right adjustments because there are other things in the practicality of the regulations that need to be updated. As the Department has probably advised the committee, there are certainly aspects in terms of the immediate closure of unregistered services whereby, if there is a grave concern, we can immediately close a premises.

The other part that I am particularly interested in, because it is about the communication with parents, is that we can post enforcement notices as soon as we have information from, for example, the Health and Safety Authority or the Food Safety Authority. That is potentially the biggest thing we can do in the new legislative framework. We are using the existing legislative framework very effectively and we have deregistered six services since the new regulations have come in. In the learning of operating that for the past three years, there certainly are things that we could improve in that regard.