Mr. Brian Purcell:

No, I do not think he was furnished with that immediately. One of the issues in that regard was that we had already had the situation where matters had been investigated by the Garda. The difficulty and what we had been trying to resolve was the fact that Sergeant McCabe had a problem, and his solicitor had already indicated that he also had a problem, with this going to the Garda, but the advice was to send it to the Garda. To some extent events overtook what was happening. The Deputy might recall that the advice was received just before Christmas and from January on we were into the run of appearances by the Garda Commissioner and Sergeant McCabe at the Committee of Public Accounts, then we were almost straight into the allegations of the bugging of the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission headquarters and everything that went with that and the establishment of the Cook report. Then there was the inspectorate report and allegations being made and given to Deputy Martin. There was all of that. Essentially, events overtook what was happening.

There had been considerable overlap, as I described earlier, but I suppose events overtook it.