Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I am pleased that the Deputy said that William is in a different and better place now. That is something positive to be taken from this. The Deputy is right to accept mistakes are made everywhere across Departments and agencies, and in every aspect of life. However, when a mistake is made, it needs to be quickly owned, responded to and resolved. What the Deputy has outlined does not show that. It shows that the mistake was resisted and potentially there were even attempts to cover over what happened. That is not acceptable in any Government agency.

Tusla is ten years old. Its tenth anniversary will be in January. It is an organisation that has undergone a lot of change in that time. In the three and a half years I have been Minister, I have seen real reform and real efforts to change across all elements of the organisation under Bernard Gloster and now under Kate Duggan. In terms of the incredibly important but also sensitive issue of investigations of allegations of child sexual abuse, that has changed as well. I understand the false allegation against William probably would have been investigated under a 2014 policy. There is now a 2022 policy that has learned from incidents such as this and learned how a social worker and the team around an investigation can accurately investigate and probe an allegation in a sensitive way but in a way that respects the rights of all parties - those subject to the allegation, those who are making the allegation and the potential victim of abuse. The Deputy has raised an important issue and I have been able to provide only an initial answer today. I will come back to him in writing on this and if he wants to raise this as a Topical Issue Matter subsequently, I will be happy for him to do so.

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