Professor Nick Hardwick:

I will deal with the ministerial point first and then Tusla. I made a contemporaneous note of my conversation with the Minister. Among the policy issues we discussed was whether in addition to Oberstown there should be some smaller units elsewhere for some of the most vulnerable children. We discussed the use of remand, the moving of 17 year olds who were not in Oberstown then - I am not sure if this has happened since - and the detention of girls. All those were national policy issues. The Minister also spoke to me about governance structures within Oberstown. We had quite a wide discussion. She wanted to know what the review would say and we discussed some of the things that were internal to Oberstown and some of the wider issues. Not only did I not get a sense that she was surprised that we had covered that, but my sense was that she wanted to know what we thought about those issues. For it to be said from that that it was outside our terms of reference, I do not follow that.

On the paragraphs that we offered to redact, something about which we were unclear from the start and we are not really clear about it now was what the legal issues were about. It was not spelled out but our first impression was that it seemed to refer to the trials of some of the boys who had been involved in disturbances. We recognised that perhaps we should not include that. The paragraphs that dealt with that were the ones we thought we should take out. Then it seemed to be about the process of consultation and whether the procedure was fair. There seemed to be a shift in what the legal issues were but we remain unclear as to what they were. If we knew what they were, we might be able to address them, but we do not.