I would urge two points on the committee.
First, subsections (3) and (4) of section 1 are at the very forefront of our consideration. Sometimes it is quite easy to lose sight of what an FAI is all about. It is made very clear in subsection (3) that the purpose of an inquiry is twofold: to
“establish the circumstances of the death”,
which is a straightforward factual question; and to
“consider what steps (if any) might be taken to prevent other deaths in similar circumstances”,
and there may well be cases in which that second question does not even arise.
If we look at FAIs in the context of that subsection and the context of the next subsection, which says that
“it is not the purpose of an inquiry to establish civil or criminal liability”,
we begin to see that, in fact, an FAI is not a free-ranging operation in which all forms of evidence are admissible and relevant. It has a fairly tightly circumscribed remit. That is the first point.
The second point is that, in any inquiry of this nature, effective case management is the key to the whole thing. There has to be effective case management in the preparatory stages, and then, once the inquiry starts, efficient and competent chairmanship is required to ensure that the inquiry addresses the relevant points and that other questions are not gone into. That makes considerable demands of the presiding sheriff but, as long as sheriffs keep it in mind, they should be able to conduct such inquiries expeditiously.