Ms Kate Duggan:

One of the concerns would be - again, I am being very honest with the committee - is with some of the global or internal movement of people. It is about making sure we put the best system in place. We hope to integrate with the single client record system across the State to make sure we have a PPS number for every child. This is to ensure that we give ourselves the best chance of locating every one of those children and acknowledging and recognising that they are in contact with a State service. The public now sees, and we see, two cases of concern where the common factor was a closure of services where children in that particular age group were not registered in school and were under the threshold of registration in school. That we have seen two cases means the review is the right thing to do and we are certainly committed to making sure it is full and robust. I asked the Minister to ensure there was an independent chair overseeing it so that there would be a robustness, and also an interagency steering group. This issue cuts across children who did not get developmental checks and who did not get to see their public health nurses, their GPs or their wider families.