Dr. Niall Muldoon:

You would like to think all staff understand their children first obligation but what we have seen and the reason our investigation was necessary was that we saw a system which developed on an ad hoc basis. The Chair spoke of that at the start. It just came out of the blue and when there was a surge in applications, another location was found to put a direct provision centre. How it was staffed was up to somebody else. We put out for private tender and contracting. You could have a hotelier putting in all their hotel managers and staff who had had nothing to do with children or direct provision previously but who knew how to cater for people, provide lunches and keep things moving and clean.

When we move to a non-profit situation controlled by the State, in which the State has the right and obligation to provide the right service, we will know our staff are looked after and trained properly and understand children first. If you had an emergency hotel in which none of the staff changed, understanding children first would not have been high on their list of priorities and then maybe they had a sudden influx of 50 families who were there for six or seven weeks. We were concerned it was not in the best interest of children and that is why we made the findings.

Is the children's unit adequately resourced? We certainly hope so. I will check with my colleague, Ms Nuala Ward, who has more awareness of that situation.