Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 13 March 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Children and Youth Affairs

Governance and Child Safeguarding Issues in Scouting Ireland: Tusla and Scouting Ireland

Mr. Jim Gibson:

We have had this conversation with Scouting Ireland to the extent that our correspondence was directly to it. It would have been a better place if Mr. Elliott's correspondence had been to me, as the chief operations officer, to start that discourse and get to that place of understanding and collaboration to resolve whatever issues had been flagged. Scouting Ireland has explained to me that it was duty-bound to share that correspondence with the Minister because it was requested to do so if there were any other concerns.

Returning to our correspondence and interaction with the Department and Minister, the bottom line is that they shared our concerns in response to the correspondence that we sent to Scouting Ireland. We did not receive a response from Scouting Ireland.

Our Chairman was on various media and gave a good account when asked about the modus operandi. It should have come straight back to us and we could have been doing our business. It may never have ended up in the public domain at all.