Mr. Martin Burbridge:

I would like to add to what Dr. Lawlor has said. We have seen reports in the newspapers but what we need to do is to make certain that we know exactly what is in those files and that if action is required to be taken on foot of the review Mr. Elliot will carry out, we take it. An alternative to that is to be satisfied that no action is required. What we are doing as part of this exercise is capturing as much of the pertinent information as possible in these files and putting it into a confidential database that we will have and we will continue doing that into the future. In the future, it will then be a lot easier for us, the statutory authorities or whoever to make inquiries of the database and find out information quickly. It will, therefore, equip us more effectively going forward than we have been equipped to date.

Some of the files go as far back as the 1950s so it may well be that some of those will not produce information that is pertinent now. Having said that, I honestly believe that one learns from the mistakes one makes in the past and it would be good to know if there was something we could have done but did not do and to make sure that it cannot reoccur in the future.