Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent)
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I thank Dr. Shannon for attending the meeting. We should contextualise this. We are still dealing with the scars of the past in terms of how we dealt with children and the lack of child protection. In that sense, it is appropriate to say that we are privileged to have something that does not happen very often in this State, a world class project that is ahead of anywhere else. That should be registered. If we have an analysis conducted which is peer reviewed and unrivalled anywhere in the world, we must take what that body of work says very seriously. I was struck by the similarities in some of the points regarding training and PULSE with what gets the headlines for the Garda, such as the breath tests. We have seen the headlines about how inadequate PULSE is, but this is child protection which in many ways is even more serious. Some of the trends Dr. Shannon has highlighted in the report feed into that background.

I have many questions so I will probably intervene again. Dr. Shannon highlights PULSE very well and the problem it poses. He says there is a number of significant anomalies in the information and documentation. Perhaps he will go into more detail on what that means. The statements in the report are quite damning, for example, that PULSE is unable to provide a consistent and accurate picture of section 12 use. That is very serious. The report states that the practice and working ideologies of child protection fall well short of international best practice and refers to numerous gaps, flaws and variations in data practice.

I ask that that be explained further. It is eight months since the report was published. What progress has been made on this issue? When one reads the report, the recommendations made for dealing with some of these issues are not just general suggestions of reviewing policies or reviewing guidelines. The witness has actually gone to the trouble of designing a new PULSEsystem to capture the information that his scientific, forensic study says needs to be captured. Has the Garda implemented that new PULSE draft to capture the type of information that the witness has told it is necessary?

The witness highlighted the area of training, which was striking. The figures were stark. Some 53% said that they had no training at all and 77% said that they did not have sufficient training in child protection. The point the witness made was that this reflected a deeper systemic problem of inadequate training inside the Garda and that on-the-job training was elevated above the training in Templemore. The attitude of, "Don't worry what they told you in college, this is the way we do that here", seems to be a feature of many of the reports that have been done. I would appreciate more detail on that.

We are often - correctly, in my view - identified as criticising the Garda, but the good thing in this report is that the individual gardaí have come out of this incredibly well and have dealt with their responsibility in child protection, as individuals, as best they could in very difficult circumstances. Perhaps that is something that we can highlight. The system is deficient, but the members of An Garda Síochána have responded excellently. I will not repeat these points.

I would like to know a little bit more about the level of co-operation the witness got. One the one hand it is striking that he got 100% co-operation. Assistant Commissioner O'Sullivan got seven replies to the maptests. The witness obviously has some influence that he does not have. On the other hand there is a contradiction, because the witness was looking for information and was hoping to complete this in January. He had to write a couple of times and go through much of his work more than once to get this information. Was there a frustration there?

The witness has identified really serious problems here. The report came out eight months ago. What has actually been done in terms of his suggestions? We need to look at this as a committee. Given that the problems are there, and given that the witness had a level of co-operation from the Garda, would it be fair to say that there was a worse response from Tusla than the Garda? There are two sides in this equation, and we often pinpoint the Garda, but Tusla seems to have been pretty poor in this as well. Perhaps that could be expanded upon.