I raise the issue of historical sex abuse of children at St. John Ambulance. Mick Finnegan, one of the survivors of that abuse, is in the Gallery. It is almost a year since the publication of the Shannon report into this. It will be over a year since the organisation received a copy of that report. It made a series of recommendations, one of which was the employment of a full-time safeguarding officer. Now, almost a year later, St. John Ambulance has come to the Government saying it does not have the funding to pay for that, and the Government has agreed to fund a €100,000-a-year post.

First, does the Minister agree that it is not acceptable - in fact, it is outrageous - that a year has passed and, at the end of that year, St. John Ambulance discovers all of a sudden it does not have the money to fund this, when it was supposedly in the process of employing the person, and now says it does not have the money and needs the Government to step in? Second, will the Minister agree that the Government needs to make a condition for this money? It needs to be conditional on a clear-out of the board of anyone who was a senior officer at the time of the disclosures or who was on the board at the time of the disclosures and the full implementation of all recommendations?

Thank you, Deputy. The time is up. It is one question on one matter. Minister, you may take only one of the questions.

What I said to Mick Finnegan on behalf of survivors on Thursday when I met with him, and what I have said to the Oireachtas joint committee subsequently, is that I am frustrated by the lack of progress on protection and a child safety lead in the organisation. To expedite that and to ensure we can have protection for the young people who continue to work in St. John Ambulance, the Government will step forward and make a contribution for the first year towards the cost of that role and, importantly, link that to an agreement with the organisation in terms of a service level agreement to allow us have a greater level of oversight and a greater level of accountability, accountability we do not currently have with the organisation.