"The ones who have something to worry about are the ones who have something to hide," says Mr Victor McElfatrick, the head of the new Social Services Inspectorate, adding quickly, "but I haven't come across people of that type at the moment."
He was talking about the role of the agency in inspecting children's residential homes.
Mr McElfatrick, who will shortly be joined by three inspectors, says inspection of children's residential homes will be under way in the next few months.
There are about 100 children's homes in the State, half run by health boards and half by religious orders and voluntary bodies.
The Social Services Inspectorate will visit and report on the homes run by the health boards.
Homes run by religious orders and voluntary bodies will be inspected, not by the Social Services Inspectorate, but by the health boards.
While Mr McElfatrick is circumspect about this arrangement, one gets the impression that he is not entirely happy with it.
The arrangement was decided on before his appointment. Stressing that he accepts the decision and that it has certain advantages in limiting the workload of the inspectorate in its early days, Mr McElfatrick says that had he been involved in the decision he would have suggested a single inspectorate to cover all homes.
He will, however, take an interest in the inspection of homes by health boards. "I would like to enter into an arrangement whereby health boards provide copies of their reports to the Social Services Inspectorate," he says. "In the longer term the Social Services Inspectorate will need to ensure that health board inspectors are operating properly, too."
Ultimately he envisages a national Social Services Inspectorate which will deal with all personal social services, whether provided by the State or by voluntary bodies, to children or to adults.
This will include institutions for old people and services for people with disabilities. For the first three years, however, the focus will be on residential childcare centres. "This is probably the area of most public concern," Mr McElfatrick says.
He believes residential childcare workers have suffered unfairly in the media in recent years. "The work a lot of staff do is demanding because of the children's difficult backgrounds," he says, but this is rarely addressed in the media. "The majority work hard and care about children and want them to develop in an appropriate way."
When inspectors visit homes, "we will talk to individual members of the staff and to the children. We would regard it as very important to talk to the children. If you want to find out what the quality of life of the children is like, you have to talk to them as well. Staff may say it's wonderful, but children may feel quite differently." Each inspection will take three to five days.
He will expect each centre to have a complaints procedure to deal with allegations in a way which is fair both to children and staff. Both parties should know what is happening with the complaint and what is being done to investigate.
"I don't get the sense they are in fear and trepidation," he says of the homes which can expect a visit in the next year. "There's a strong welcome for this in Ireland. Many feel it is an opportunity to redress the balance which they feel is loaded against them."
Reports on individual homes may be available to those who request them under the Freedom of Information Act. Mr McElfatrick worries that residential homes are now so small that children may be identifiable to those who read the reports.
He would hope the inspectorate will publish an annual report on the range of childcare institutions, including those inspected by health boards. That has still to be determined and is a decision which will rest with his successor. Mr McElfatrick is on a one-year secondment from the Northern Ireland Social Services Inspectorate until the end of March.
The inspectorate is unlikely to carry out investigations such as the Madonna House inquiry, Mr McElfatrick says. Such investigations would side-track it from its task of inspecting children's residential centres. But he expects the inspectorate to be involved in making recommendations on who should conduct inquiries.
Following RTE's States of Fear series, the Government announced that residential centres for people with disabilities would also be monitored by the inspectorate. However, inspection of these centres will not happen straight away. "Disabilities is not part of our immediate raft of work," Mr McElfatrick says. He is assistant chief inspector in Northern Ireland. The inspectorate there has 12 inspectors compared to the Republic's starting number of three.