Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 9 May 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Children and Youth Affairs

Governance and Child Protection Policy: Scouting Ireland

4:10 pm

Mr. Martin Burbridge:

Yes, we believe it is. We have taken immediate steps to deal with the safeguarding issues. We know all the things we need to do because Mr. Elliot has made his recommendations and he is continuing to work with us.

On the governance issues, we believe the proposals we are putting together should satisfy not just the Minister but any other experts in dealing with governance and the way in which we have to reformulate our national structure. That information is pretty much to hand but, as it happens, this weekend we will be working to finalise and develop the proposals for consideration by our members on 30 June. We have no difficulty in being able to provide as much information as possible to the Minister's appointee in order to deal with this fairly quickly.

I have made myself available as the person who is leading the change management situation in Scouting Ireland. Given that I am retired, I have the time to be able to converse and meet with Ms van Turnhout as often as required in order to go through the information. I am absolutely familiar with it because I have been working on it for about three years. We should be able to satisfy what the Minister needs. It will not have been implemented but it will be what we had intended to implement, although six to eight months earlier than we had originally envisaged. We intend to have it in place by 6 October of this year.