Mr. Simon O'Brien:

I do not think it is contradictory at all. Risk assessment is dynamic. Events happen and events that did not happen the year before will happen the following year. That is the issue here. For the first year of the commission, we were not out in the public domain on a regular basis. We were working away quietly to try to achieve our objectives. These objectives are impartial and ensure we investigate fairly. Coming through into the second year of our commissionership, we were far more about making criticisms. That resulted in certain matters appearing in the press.

We felt that this was always something we were going to do from the get-go. We discussed it early on when we first came together as a commission and had been around the whole debate for a while. It is clear we were making contact with the old Irish firm we had engaged before. At the time, when we finally got in touch with the UK firm, it was time to do a security sweep. I was probably more surprised than anyone for the sort of suspected activity and threats to have been turned up when I came in and had the report delivered to me on a Tuesday morning.