Mr. Jim Gibson:

In autumn 2016, we were concerned about the level of unallocated retrospective cases. We developed a national service improvement plan to try to allocate those cases to the system. Back then, there were 1,058 unallocated cases. We appointed a national lead and regional leads for the national service improvement plan. As of today, we have allocated all but 103 of those cases. People get very concerned when they hear of retrospective abuse cases and so on. Some of the analysis bears out what Mr. Quinlan said in terms of social workers having all of the responsibility without any clear authority. It should not be forgotten that adults who have experienced an abusive life experience as a child find that incredibly difficult, painful and hurtful. At times, they come, but pull back. Our language is really important. These are complainants. They are making a disclosure, but they are making a disclosure about a criminal act perpetrated against them. As stated by Mr. Quinlan, in 71% of retrospective cases we do not get past stage one because the complainants find it hard to tell their story to the extent that gives us sufficient information to progress to stage two. The 71% relates to cases in the South in respect of which we analysed the work. We found that often people who make a complaint about a childhood abusive experience cannot engage with us to give us the information we need. We are doing a lot of work but the substantiation is very low.

As outlined Mr. Quinlan, the direction of travel is co-working with An Garda Síochána. I worked with a police force in another jurisdiction. I was trained on how to work with the police on abuse referrals. That system worked exceptionally well.