Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The ten minutes always seems like it is going to be long and then when you are in it is incredibly short, but I will move to another issue. There was inspection report oversight monitoring visit during the Covid-19 pandemic at the Dóchas Centre, which was published in August 2020. A significant section of that report is redacted. Ms McCaffrey may correct me if I am wrong on this, but that redacted piece gave rise to two further reports that are as yet unpublished but sitting on the Minister's desk. The first is an investigation report under section 31(2) of the Prisons Act and then an associated supplementary report. Producing reports of that kind involves significant expenditure by the State. Ms McCaffrey can give me more detail on this. I understand there is legal advice as to why they are unpublished, but as members of the public accounts committee we are saying there has been considerable public expenditure on a number of reports and we do not have sight of them. Without having sight of them how can we comfort the issues identified in those reports have been adequately addressed?