Professor Alan Reilly:

On 21 December, we asked the Department to take samples of raw materials from the Silvercrest plant. I asked the officials in question not to mention this to anyone - to keep it to themselves for now - because we did not know what was going on. We were in the middle of an investigation. We are living in an era of social media. If there had been a small hint of what was going on, it would have gone around the world 20 times before I got home that evening that there was a horsemeat problem with Irish products. One could imagine what would have happened, especially with some of the journalists we have now. Even within the authority itself, the investigation was limited to a small number of people. We did not want anything to leak out because of the immense damage it could cause.