Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As head 8 is the most meaty and most important one on that matter, I thank Ms McGovern for that clarification on the judgment on the prohibition on holding hearings in public. My reading of it was - and it is only my reading - that as section 4 states "ensure investigations are conducted otherwise than in public", if "investigations" includes all aspects of the investigation, that is, receiving the complaint, mediation and the oral hearing, oral hearings would be captured by that sentence. There is a clarification or qualification in the next section which states that if it is deemed that an oral hearing is required, the ombudsman shall decide whether to conduct it in public or private and use the three criteria. I read that as the overriding point is that the hearings are held in private, but the three criteria can be used to decide whether a hearing should be held in public, rather than whether it should be held in private.