John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

-----the point of view of an employer. If something goes wrong on the floor of my factory, I find out the name of the person who might be involved and ask him or her into my office for a discussion, particularly when the information being put into the public domain is damaging my company. I am not telling Mr. Callinan how to do his job, as I would not dare do that, but this would appear to be the commonsensical, simple way to deal with the matter.

When one analyses this situation, there is not much difference between the type of material that the Comptroller and Auditor General or Assistant Commissioner O'Mahoney examined and what is available to the committee. However, it has been made available everywhere. It is out there. Surely someone needs to discuss with the person or persons the reasons he or they are putting it out there and look at the names, Garda numbers and so on involved to see whether this man's case stands up. I am only asking from a practical point of view. Can someone not bring about a resolution to that in this way? Of the two whistleblowers, one with whom we have been dealing has asked to appear before the committee next Thursday. We must deal with it in private or public session and reflect on what has been said today. The members want to hear from that whistleblower, but not to know names, places or how something happened. For example, the whistleblower referred to file No. 204, whatever that means, and stated that attached were a number of tickets terminated for the first ten months of 2012 and that, having taken a generous percentage off, some 25%, the amount of revenue lost was serious at €720,000. We do not know whether this is right or wrong.