Mr. Justin Kelly:

At the outset, it is important to say that everyone involved, be that the Garda interviewers or the Tusla interviewers, has the best interest of the child absolutely at the centre. However, the Senator is right; they are coming from two different cultures and two different ways of looking at things, as I said to Deputy Costello earlier. That is why the training is really important for us in order that both sides get a real understanding of what the other side is trying to do. Obviously, for us, it is about gathering that evidence to the highest possible standard that we can use in court cases. For Tusla, it is about gathering the information it needs.

When you think about it, the Garda specialist interviewers have been in place since 2008. We have had that system in place although we are introducing something relatively new into it. However, all the Tusla people are all volunteers and all want to do this type of work. Of course, it is only natural there will be some cultural things. There are going to be people with various ideas, around training and course content and stuff in particular but we have worked through a lot of that.

I will give a quick example to finish up. Our training, how we did it, our policy and procedures as well as our training course and the number of days people had to be on it, all have been set in place for many years. As I said to Deputy Costello, it is easy for us to say that people are going on a three-week training course and that they are going to be taken out of their station for that duration. It is quite easy for us to say that but it is not as easy for Tusla to take people out for three weeks. Now, we have broken up courses into different timeframes. We have worked on the content. We have amended the content so that it is more reflective of both organisations. We have done a lot to overcome some of those things. Naturally, with people from different organisations, you are going to have a bit of that and I am sure Ms Duggan will agree that we would not expect anything other than some of that. However, our role at senior level is to make sure that all those things, as Deputy Costello said about roadblocks, are all smoothed out.

Going back to what I said at the start, all involved in this have the best interest of the child at heart. It is our role to ensure that we smooth all of those things over.