Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I absolutely take the point the Senator is making. On the initial point, the Senator has described what I would like to see in terms of the final outcome. Obviously, as I have made clear, it will be people who have much greater expertise and knowledge in these areas, both in the collection of this material and its subsequent portrayal in the records of a memorial centre, who will make the determinations about how that is best done.

On the Senator's second point, were the Government to take a position to undertake that more legalistic approach that would be seen as a reviewing and a contradicting or rewriting of certain elements, and the confidential committee is just one element of the workings of the commission of investigation, that does become problematic. It becomes legally difficult in the context of the commission of investigation legislation, which very clearly establishes an independent commission of investigation. For one part of its workings to be reanalysed or re-critiqued does pose a difficulty.

Following the appearance in Oxford, I am aware that the chair of the commission wrote to this committee and outlined the approach it took to the testimony. I know the survivors subsequently may have taken issue with the chair's description of how that testimony was treated. I recognise that. This is why in the proposal we are looking to bring forward, we are looking to move away from that purely legalistic approach, which has caused very significant upset, and particularly in the terms. We all recall the phrasing and the design of the executive summary of the commission's report, which again is highly legalistic and was insulting to survivors and may also have obscured some of the more important legal findings that the body of the commission's work actually did reach.