Mr. Pat Smyth:

We have covered that several times in our responses. For clarity, at the risk of repeating myself too many times, the engagement that Tusla expected was the direct communication back from Scouting Ireland. As Mr. Gibson said, we cannot do business like this. The key objective of Tusla and every other organisation is around ensuring that child protection is at the highest level possible in Ireland. We will not do that if we have a situation where, when we correspond with organisations, we do not get a response back but that it goes somewhere else. The challenge for the Department and the Minister was that having had sight of the correspondence, they were in a very difficult position not to give that information publicly. I have no comment other than that is what happened. On Tusla and any other organisation doing business, it is about ensuring that we can look each other in the eye, try to address the issues and put plans in place. We must do that ourselves in ensuring that we meet our requirements with HIQA and other organisations. These are challenges that we have but we must do that straight across all organisations.