Mr. Bernard Gloster:

I thank the Deputy. Dr. O'Mahony made observations on the enforcement question. The Deputy's view on supports other than counselling is a very good lens through which to look at this. Counselling is not for everybody, or it is not for everybody at that point in time. For other people it is often practical assistance to connect them with other personal or health-related social services. It must be very broad. This is why the skill set, as referred to by Ms Carey, which is beyond but not exclusive to social work, would help both the social work and would help people with regard to time.

On the issue of the apology, one of the things I want to say is that the debate about the law and what the law did or did not allow around people's access to identity has long since been aired. I do not believe there is anything more I can say other than as a State agency we were obliged, and are obliged, to operate within the law. Notwithstanding this, the frustration, pain, hurt and anger people have described around not being able to get their basic identity is their experience. Inasmuch as we are the people who had to be party to that decision or deliver it, or be at the provision end of that, this is why the range of the apology is important. This is why it goes far beyond the story of the mother and baby homes commission piece, because that is not the total story of adoption either. I want it to be much broader than that and to talk about people's own sense of their experience of having had to engage with both sets of State agencies that were the main drivers of the management of records for the past couple of years. I would not want to qualify it beyond that because it could do a disservice to them.

On the question of how "we cannot ever let that happen again", it is one of the greatest phrases if one looks at every inquiry into personal and social services in Ireland or every health-related inquiry when things have turned out to be not good, totally unsatisfactory, or have gone completely wrong. We produce inquiries that are helpful and instructive but our response as human beings is that this cannot happen again. Access to information is in whatever is the final version of the Act to come out of the Bill we are discussing today. This is how that will "never happen again".