Professor Nick Hardwick:

It has to be looked at and of course it was different in some cases. Some were things that were being talked about. Our view is that it should be the Oberstown board that publishes the report and we have been very consistent on that. We will keep our side of the bargain, we will not say what is in the report until it is released and I would not want to do that. I will say that in common with many establishments of this type, there is a distinction between what the policy is - and indeed often what managers think is happening - and what is really happening on the ground. We found a number of examples where that difference was there. We saw examples of what was clearly happening as opposed to what management thought was happening and there was a gap between the two. That is certainly not a problem that is unique to Oberstown. That is very consistent with that sort of closed establishment. In some cases, simply saying that the response to a recommendation is that a policy on X will be produced does not really address the issue unless what was not happening before is clear and is accepted in order to be able to do something different in the future that will address the issue. Quite often, what is happening in Oberstown was that the written policies were great but that was not what we found to actually be happening on the ground.