Mr. Adrian Tennant:

-----or that safe practices are in place. We are not defined by policies only; we are defined by our practices. We cannot rest on our hunkers knowing a particular safeguarding statement is signed off and ratified and we have it in our halls and bring it to our camps. I was camping this weekend and on the shelter of our tent was pinned the safeguarding statement. Even when we are out in the field the safeguarding statement is there and that is normal practice.

What defines us, and it is something of which we are very proud, is that we are always changing because we must appreciate safeguarding is not a standstill topic. The same evening I was on "Prime Time", the programme had other stories about social media concerns for young people. It is always evolving. The threats to children and the dangers to which children are exposed nowadays change all the time. We have to stay on top of this and we do so very simply when we train our adult scouters. As an aside, we do not call ourselves leaders any more because we are very much led by our youth members who decide the programme. This is something we know but people outside do not know. Our adult volunteers are our scouters and they facilitate the programme for the young people that they themselves develop.

It is not a right for anybody to become a volunteer in Scouting Ireland, it is a privilege. To access that privilege people must go through a number of steps before even getting to the residential course about which Dr. Lawlor spoke. During all of this time we spot whether there are issues. It starts with the group leader bringing in a person. On the residential course there is a four hour block dedicated to safeguarding but safeguarding is there throughout the entire weekend. Every three years, because it is not a topic that stands still, we retrain our adult volunteers and they are fully co-operative with it. There is no push back. They have a yearning to know what are the latest things they need to watch out for when looking after young people. This is an onerous task for the organisation from a practical training point of view but it is something we have been doing and we continue to do. It is not just about the thing that is on the wall or pinned to the tent, it is about our people. Our people are constantly trained and updated as new things come in.