Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. I know this is something she has been interested in for some time and I know I have responded to her on this previously. Section 27 of the Act provides for the review to which her question refers. We commissioned an independent consultant to undertake the statutory review but there have been a number of reasons, more particularly her work to complete the familicide study, which meant it was not possible to conclude this in the timeframe. A particular individual was commissioned to focus on this piece of work. We had a very unfortunate situation where the person commissioned to do the familicide study passed away. On engaging this individual for this particular study, we asked her to take it on and that piece of work took much longer. I was reluctant to take her off the particular work she was doing or to take away this particular review because we anticipated the familicide work would be done much more quickly.

Where we are now essentially is, following discussions with this individual we have mutually agreed that it is not possible for her to complete this particular study. She has been very helpful however in making available to my Department the documentation and the research that has been done. So that is not to say there is absolutely nothing done at this stage. My Department will advertise shortly to commission a new person to complete the review. The reason that is happening now is because it is only in the last few weeks that we received the body of work that has been done to date. Without setting out the terms of reference we wanted to know whether it was a commission for a piece of work that would include research interviews, the background work, or just the writing up of a report. It is just the writing up of a report. A huge body of work has been done. That will be advertised shortly and I can absolutely assure the Deputy that once the review is completed and the report received, any recommendations made will be brought to this House.

It really was a case that we had an unfortunate situation where somebody passed away; the person who was supposed to conduct this particular review took on the familicide report that took much longer than intended; I did not want to take her off this particular commissioned report but, unfortunately, the delay has resulted in us going way beyond what had been committed to in the legislation. It is an absolute priority to get this up and running as soon as possible but what is positive is the bones of the research work has been done. It is now a matter of just writing up the report.

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