Dr. Niall Muldoon:

On the Deputy's question about the files, I would not be 100% sure about it. It would be a matter for the Data Protection Commission. Again, if one is putting the child at the centre of one's thinking, then one would expect he or she should be able to get an unredacted file on himself or herself without it interfering with the rights of other people. That is where the caveat comes in and redaction happens. Certainly, what we have seen so far from looking at "Prime Time" - and the Deputy mentioned the culture - is that if we are going to create confidence and security for the families, then the culture we have seen so far and which was highlighted by the whistleblower was far from what we want with regard to collaboration and co-operation.

To answer the Deputy's other question about the interface between Departments and overall responsibility, we had a great success with an investigation we did with Jack, a little boy with severe disabilities who had a brain injury and was kept in hospital for two and a half years instead of being brought back to his own home. Tusla and the HSE argued over it. We now have a situation where they have found a way to work together and to share the funding for children like Jack. They have done the same in the case of another child, Molly, where they are sharing a budget. That is the first time I have seen it happen that there is a legislative underpinning within the budget and the Votes to allow a certain cohort of children, who are being cared for by two different Departments, to be funded by the two Departments together and that they have got a process in place for that. Making that happen was driven by the CEOs of both the HSE and Tusla and the Departments which fixed it. We need to get to a situation where the Department of Health can share some of its money with the Department of Education. Again, this is forward planning. In the case of children with severe and profound disabilities in particular, you know who they are from the day they are born, unless it is a brain injury, and again in that case, you can predict very quickly what they are going to need in the future.

We had a meeting last week with the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. It was talking about legislating for mandatory collaboration and co-operation across Departments. It is terrible that we have to do that but if that is the way forward, let us do that. Let us mandate that Departments must co-operate and collaborate on behalf of the children. Again, the child then becomes the centre of decision-making and it takes away those barriers so we can share information, share budgets and predict what is needed. That way, nobody needs to fight over what is required because going back to what Mr. Harris said at the start about constant battles with families, we do not need to have them if we predict, as much as we can.