Dr. Clíona Saidléar:

There are a series of cracks through which child sexual violence cases can fall. We have talked about the failures of the criminal justice system. Tusla and HIQA made some urgent recommendations around specialisation last summer. HIQA was clear that the specialisation was not there for the people doing the assessments and talking to these children and HIQA needed to work on that urgently. It was training specialist interviewers, the most recent tranche of whom came out in January. If Tusla does not catch that, these cases are not going to turn up in public family law. The next net for them to fall into is private family law. There is then a situation whereby experts are publicly funded when we have not got the regulation right yet as to specialisation and provision and the cost will be €2,000 to €4,000. There is not another safety net if one does not have that money. That is the last safety net and that child falls through another crack.