Department For Infrastructure

Well, it shouldn't be where we're at.

In fact, the Department for Infrastructure has stopped road building, all major road building at the moment, because it's waiting on the A5 ruling.

So I don't understand why they're running out of money to perform basic maintenance tasks here.

It's just that the department is notoriously mismanaged.

Noah was failed.

He was failed by the Department for Infrastructure who left a deadly storm drain unsecured and accessible to children.

He was failed by the PSNI who, from the moment I reported him missing, repeatedly failed to investigate and from the moment he was found, stopped looking for answers.

Instead, to deflect from their own failings, the Department for Infrastructure and Police have sought to blame Noah.

This inquest has exposed a culture of institutional defensiveness that goes to the heart of these public bodies coupled with a reckless disinterest in investigating what happened to my son.

I will never understand why and can never accept that Noah's death did not merit a full and fearless investigation.

It's easy to say you don't know when you failed to find out.

It's easy to say you can't recall when you haven't secured and preserved the evidence capable of providing answers.

Extremely important.

I mean, for instance, one of our key asks this year is that our Department for Infrastructure's active travel delivery plan puts the issues facing pedestrians and walking at the same level as issues for cyclists.

And we find that that is one thing that's coming to us quite firmly from blind and partially sighted people as there is a worry that the DFI here is not placing pedestrianisation and the walking at the same priority level as cyclists.

So that is one that ourselves will be calling for all of the parties to endorse.

We have got the findings of the inquest, and, and we do have those before the court and before the public.

And, uh, as we say at the start, the, one of the top lines from this is that the Department for Infrastructure erred.

They made errors in their management of the culvert in which Noah was found dead.

In terms of the facts of death, the jury did confirm Noah's name, the name of the deceased, the date of birth, all those details.

That was the 21st of June, 2020.

Uh, now, in terms of those questions about w- what contributed to his death, they said it was not probable that any failing on behalf of the department or any failing on behalf of the police contributed to his death.

They did say it was possible that some, some failings on behalf of the Department for Infrastructure regarding the access to the culvert in and of itself, so that's things like signage and fencing and access to that culvert, they said that it was possible it may have contributed to his death, but they did not find that there were any probable things on the part of the police or on the part of the Department for Infrastructure that led to his death.

We don't know what caused Noah's behavior the night he went missing, we don't know where he went the night before, and we don't know what led him to that culvert and into that culvert.

It is now the closest we've got to official answers about how Noah's body ended up in an underground water tunnel in Belfast six years ago.

The jury found Noah died on the same evening he disappeared, that the Department for Infrastructure's failure to block access to the storm drain possibly contributed to Noah's death.

And despite listing police failures, the jury said the PSNI did not contribute to Noah's death.

It's been obviously an incredibly difficult day for Noah's family, particularly his mother, Fiona, who wiped tears away as the verdict was read.

Yeah.

Um, so question eight is the first of our two-part questions.

I think the easiest way maybe to explain this is that it's the same question twice, and it relates to the Department for Infrastructure.

And the first question says, "Is it probable that any error of the Department for Infrastructure in its management of access to the culvert more than minimally, negligibly, or trivially contributed to his death?" To rephrase that, if I may, it's asking, "Is it probable that any errors within the Department for Infrastructure meaningfully contributed to Noah's death?" And the answer to that was?