Mr. Adrian Tennant:

With regard to the issue of confidence, the Deputy says that Scouting Ireland is yet another organisation in which there is historical abuse. That is quite correct and we have owned that since we became aware of it last year. We broke that story ourselves. It was horrific and depraved. While we have inherited strong traditions and other good things from our former organisations, equally we must also own this. We take the good with the bad. It is absolutely horrific. We were as upset as anybody else when watching those television programmes. I again acknowledge the bravery of those who spoke out and those who have come forward and spoke to us and to other statutory agencies.

The Deputy spoke about current confidence in the organisation. As I said in my opening statement, we are in the middle of developing a new strategic plan for Scouting Ireland. As part of this, we carried out a survey of people involved with Scouting Ireland, including youth members, adult members, parents and some outside stakeholders. We expected 300 to 400 responses, which would give us a good data set on which to formulate our new strategic plan. We actually got 1,306 responses. To help in answering Deputy Funchion's question, 695 of those responses came from parents. We asked specific questions of those who identified themselves as parents. We asked them how strongly they agreed with certain statements on a scale of one to ten. These statements included "My child is safe when attending Scouts", "I am aware of Scouting Ireland's Child Protection and Safeguarding Policy" and "I feel there is good supervision for children at Scouts". This is very recent information so I am quite happy to share it today. The average score for each of these statements was 9.1, 9.4 and 9.1 respectively. The parents who are with us at the moment and to whom we owe a great deal for retaining that trust and faith in us continue to have great confidence in Scouting Ireland because they know the changes we have made in respect of safeguarding over recent years. It is our job, as the board of directors, to protect that trust and to continue implementing best practice in this area. On the issue of best practice, I will pass over to Mr. Begley who will speak about what happens now.