Barry Andrews (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

I have said it before and I will repeat that I had no obligation to publish anything in this report. I was anxious to publish as much of it as I could, subject to the legal advice that I received. If we were in the business of cover up, none of the report would have been published. The most hard hitting recommendations would not have been published. Those parts that were not published were not published for specific, legal reasons and not for any other reason. The suggestions by Deputy Shatter that we are in the business of protecting reputations at the expense of the welfare of children is a false dichotomy. We must respect the fact that this was a non-statutory inquiry with which people co-operated on the understanding that no adverse findings would be made against individuals.

I wanted to publish as much of the report as possible for both the public and health professionals to understand the circumstances that led to this terrible tragedy so that, in so far as possible, this would not happen again in the future.

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