Erin McGreehan (Fianna Fail)
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I thank the witnesses. It is lovely to hear from them. I apologise for missing parts of the contributions because I had to attend other meetings. For me there are more questions for the Department and not for the witnesses. They all have articulated so well the challenges, to say the least, with the legislation and the amount of work we as a committee must do to advocate for change on so many of these issues. As Deputy Cairns said, we have all been told the Bill is the pathway to the protocol. We have been pushing this and wanting it. Now I wonder whether we have reached a bottleneck. We are not particularly ready for everything. Mr. McGrath has mentioned that people do not know what this is about.

I have a few questions. I apologise for their generality because many specific questions have been brought up. I will look over the entire debate later and listen to it. Coming in and out we do not get the proper feel for it. I believe it was Dr. Harnett who mentioned the codes of practice in her contribution. The DSS has launched a public consultation. There is a tight timeframe for public consultation on the draft codes of practice and the regulations that have been published. Has the DSS put it out on Twitter? Has there been a press release? Has it sufficiently engaged with the people this directly affects so there will be proper input and buy-in to all of these code of practices?

The codes of practice are crucial to getting this right. I absolutely agree with having a review of them. We know any measure that has been implemented can always be improved a year down the road. Has there been enough done by the DSS? It has a very fancy website and it is very lovely. Is it accessible? Is it working for the people it is supposed to work for? How can we advocate for this? Is it working at a basic communication level between it and those it is supposed to be there for? It is not there for us to get references, press releases and the latest news. It is there for people who need the support.