Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. From my part and that of the Minister, Deputy Zappone, we feel that the establishment of the forum has added to this process. The term the Deputy used is very apt - "nothing about us without us". However, we need to bear in mind that Government committed to consider the recommendations but not to automatically implement all of them. We are currently considering some and implementing others.

On the publication of the report, much of that related to legal advice, which indicated that the report should not be published ahead of the commission's report, principally because there may be references in it that could cause the forum to be sued by other people. We do not want to expose the members to that. The legal advice in that space is that it has to be borne in mind that the report can prejudice the outcome of the commission's report. We do not want to see people who joined a forum and wrote a report in good faith finding themselves being brought before the courts by people who believe they have been defamed or institutions saying that they were defamed by the report. We would never ask somebody to be exposed to that again.

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