Ms Kate Duggan:

I can talk to that because that was part of the mediation I led on as CEO in the case. There had been agreement to move to mediation in this case. There had been previous High Court proceedings. From those proceedings and based on all the legal advice I received, I understood that if this proceeded to full hearing, there was a chance that Tusla would lose or not be successful. The absolute shared objective of the board of Tusla was to seek to settle through mediation. When we started the mediation, there were a number of issues to be resolved within it. The initial settlement that was requested was multiples of what was eventually settled for. I knew I had a delegation to be able to sanction settlements up to €50,000. I have confirmation of that in writing. Within the agency, it has never been custom and practice that the sanction would include any associated legal fees. Often at the time of mediation, people do not have the full cost of legal fees. I knew I was working to a limit of €50,000. We also had a date for a full hearing of 6 November. That was the date of the full hearing, so there were just a few days in which to mediate a settlement.

When I looked at the likely cost of the full hearing and the cost of another day's mediation - there are significant costs associated with mediation - and the fact that there was an absolute indication and collective consideration that we would lose, I made the offer of €49,999 from an expediency perspective. I spoke to the chair of the board and got consent for that. I spoke to the Secretary General and principal officer in our parent Department to confirm I had the sanction up to €50,000. As I said, I got that case settled for a fraction of what was originally looked for or even of what had been paid out in the other cases that were managed in a different way, and I avoided going to a full hearing-----