Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein)

I thank the Minister of State. I want to let the Acting Chair know that the perpetrator is now deceased and the name is already in the public domain.

I thank the Minister of State for the response from the Minister's office. Every time I come in here, we do not know everything. I see in the response that €251,000 was ring-fenced for safeguarding. I would say Scouting Ireland has spent a lot more than €251,000 on it.

The response also states that the organisation adheres to national child protection guidelines and procedures. I am going to look at them and see whether that is the case because a lot of people are coming to me saying that they have been ignored for years.

In addition, we are told the organisation's board reviews the child safeguarding policy to ensure it abides by all legal requirements and has written procedures in place. I would like to see the written procedures because this individual rang seven years ago and was referred to Tusla, and that is where it stopped.

I am concentrating on this one individual because they gave me the most information. Their life has been ruined. The trauma is still ongoing. The person is very happily married and they have children. They are lucky to still be in a good working relationship in life. All this individual and others want are answers to why they were not safeguarded and why they were not facilitated with help once the reporting started and it all went into the public domain. This issue was raised in July 2003, March 2004 and the most recent article was in 2017. It is not a big secret, but what I am trying to find out is who I can go to in order to make sure that Scouting Ireland lives up to its responsibility and gives these people and others a proper response, and stops stalling and wasting money by using senior counsel and stalling the process in court houses and changing legal counsel to take it on again. It is only costing these people money. I thank the Minister of State for his answer. I will get on to the Minister myself as well. I thank him for his response.

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