Ms Geraldine Moran:

I will start. I agree with all of that. When we went back and looked at the research, even though we were not specifically looking for a risk assessment, we found there was no evidence of risk assessment. We were surprised by the approach taken. From our point of view, it showed a lack of research but also almost a lackadaisical approach.

If we go right back to the period between 2007 and 2009, a committee - a reference group - was set up to look at how disability would work and so on and it came up with the model we now know. We could not find within that any evidence. We sent in a parliamentary question just to check if we were wrong or had missed something. We were looking at the key national documents, which Dr. O'Leary outlined in her opening statement, and were told this was where all the documents were. When we submitted the parliamentary question we were sent a link to all the key national documents and there was nothing there, or nothing that we saw, around risk assessments.

We then went further and requested, under the Freedom of Information Act, the minutes of this reference group. Ten meetings were held over the course of two years and we were able to access eight of the ten sets of minutes. Two could not be found and we asked again. We would have loved to have seen those two sets of minutes because they were the first two sets and were meant to be available. They could not be found, however. In those eight sets of minutes, there appeared to us to be a real lack of planning and of checking what was out there that could be used.

The Senator asked of we are outliers. It is quite possible we are. If we want to set up a model, what is the first thing we do? We look at what is working and what is not; what is working here and what is working abroad. Then we take the best from that and apply it in an Irish context. We could find no evidence of that. If we look at the National Council for Special Education, NCSE, it produced its document on special classes and so on in early January. It refers to the research committee the NCSE had, which looked at all the different strategies that were being used locally and internationally and from which it drew. From what we looked at, we could not find any evidence to show this had happened.

The Senator mentioned the rights-----