Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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Therein lies the difficulty. Please, there is no need for any further expansive narrative because here we go again; the onus was left on the family to make the call. That is a derogation of your duty. Irrespective of what the family thought, there was a responsibility on the State and on the authorities to protect this woman. She is a woman at this stage. She entered the care arrangement at the age of 12 in the year when the concerns were first brought to the attention of the authorities but she was left there. The explanation offered by the witness - let us not put any blas on it - is that she was left there because that was the decision of her family. That simply does not stack up.

I am also alarmed at the fact - not least because the witnesses are before this committee - that they are not in a position to give us chapter and verse on precisely what amount of State money found its way into this particular institution. This is information that should be made available to the committee. It is information that ought to be in the public domain. We have a scenario where State moneys are, at least in part, funding this place yet the HSE's oversight duties and so on - as were conceded in the letter of apology - were simply not fulfilled, not least in the case of Ann.