Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party)
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I would like to pick this issue apart a bit more but I am worried we would get stuck in that legalistic approach. However, I wish to pick up on the retrospective stuff in general. HIQA has repeatedly commented that Tusla struggles in terms of retrospective abuse. That goes back years in its various reports. Research was recently undertaken by Dr. Joseph Mooney in University College Dublin, UCD. Many of the people interviewed during that project said that having been through the process, if they had known what it would have entailed, they would not have come forward and made their disclosures. This is very worrying in respect of child protection in general. It is the survivors who campaigned and came forward who have brought this issue to light, as has been acknowledged widely during this meeting. A question arises in that context: what are we doing to ensure that Tusla will be good enough in respect of retrospective abuse, given how it has come through HIQA's assessments year after year?

Moving to the supports for survivors, some of those I have spoken to have been very blunt and said they feel they are only getting support now because of the media attention that has been on this issue. Does Tusla see its role as providing supports to people? When people make retrospective abuse allegations, those must be grounded and founded. There must be follow-through in respect of those accused and in the context of the entire risk assessment aspect. Then, however, there are also the survivors. Is it Tusla's role to provide them with supports? I compare this situation to parents whose children have been taken into care. We have repeatedly discussed here this lacuna and gap, and how it falls on NGOs and other groups to provide that support to parents. It seems that there are people who are, as a direct result of child protection issues, suffering and that Tusla takes a corporate attitude that it is not the organisation's role to support these people. Obviously, we cannot get into the issue of those parents whose children have been taken into care, but when survivors have gone through the founding process, etc., what happens then? They are still sitting there, holding that trauma and pain.

Is it Tusla's corporate role to support them? If so, how can that be done? Does Tusla feel that is being done well enough? I ask because I know that the survivors think that is not the case.