Dr. Karen McAuley:

I thank the Deputy for his questions. I will take the question relating to the proposal to provide for a new statutory duty for the Ombudsman for Children under this general scheme. As I noted, the Ombudsman for Children met officials from the Department at the end of February on that point. Our position is that we are, in principle, open to taking on this new statutory duty. We have no principled objection to it and if we had, we would have made it known before today. We are, however, interested in how that will be operationalised in practice, as well as the potential impact it is going to have. Among the things we feel we need to discuss further - and we have communicated this to the Department - is the mechanism through which it is proposed to operationalise this role for the office and the interaction between the Department and our office in respect of that role. We also need to further discuss the additional resources the office will need in order to discharge this new duty. There are also other factors that I will not go into in detail. Broadly speaking, it is about making sure that this new duty and its implementation are aligned with the Ombudsman for Children Act, our statutory independence, our function under section 7 of the Act to promote the rights and welfare of children and so on.

It is about making sure there is alignment there and it is all complementary. I will hand over to my colleague, Ms Ward, to address the Deputy’s other questions.