Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Can I clarify it? What is indicated here is not definitive and the Minister clung to that phrase that there was "no definitive evidence", but what that hid was that there were substantial concerns on the part of the Ombudsman that they were under surveillance and that surveillance may have been conducted by the Garda. That prompted it to undertake an investigation and to bring in experts and when they came they found more threats, further adding to possible concerns that it was under surveillance. Nothing is definitive about that. We do not know definitively if it was bugged but there was substantial evidence that it might have been bugged and the security experts told it that one of the threats that was identified was Government level technology. Any reasonable person would look at that and consider that to be of serious concern, with a need to get of the bottom of it. One certainly would not respond to those facts by saying, "There is nothing to look into here; let us move on," which is essentially what the Minister said to the Dáil last week.