Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

I thank Senator Kelleher. We have been limited in time but I get a sense the impact has been fairly profound. I propose we publish all the opening statements on the committee's website. Is that agreed? Agreed.

On behalf of the committee I thank all the organisations and bodies that came before us. I appreciate it was difficult dealing with such a myriad of different issues but unfortunately those are the circumstances in which the committee has been forced to deal with all that. You are all professional advocates and important people in your own right and that showed in the evidence you presented and the concise way in which you answered your questions.

Ms Behan, of course, is not a professional. This committee set out at a very early stage that we would try, as well as hearing from experts and people working in particular fields, to ensure we had human voices and people with real life experience. The decision of the committee to pursue that has been very much vindicated by your presence and I hope all other victims and people with a concern about this area consider you have been a very strong voice for all them, because certainly I think that is the view of this committee. I sincerely thank you for doing that. The officials from the Department got off lightly. I hope they understand that will not happen again.

I ask the committee's agreement to go into private session as we have a number of housekeeping matters to deal with. Once again a special thank you to all our visitors in the Gallery for being here for what was, for a number of you, a very stressful and retraumatising experience, in that you had to listen to people talk about your rights. The committee will be producing a report and I hope that will vindicate those rights and your presence today. Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.