Mr. Brian Purcell:

I have already said that if there is a belief that nothing was done or it was not taken seriously, that is not the case. I have already outlined in some considerable detail the various things that happened in relation to the whole penalty points issue for want of a better description: the establishment of the investigation by the assistant commissioner; the examination of an additional random 1% over and above the cases that were mentioned in the allegations that were being made; the referral then of the O'Mahoney report to the professional standards unit in the Garda Síochána; following on from that the former Minister's referral of the report to the Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality; the Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality then referring it to the Joint Committee on Public Service Oversight and Petitions; and the Minister then referring them to the Garda Síochána Inspectorate and the extensive and far-reaching report it carried out not only into the particular allegations but into the system itself. As I said, at one point during a discussion with Garda associations someone said the Garda Síochána Inspectorate was not independent. By God, when it produced that report, it certainly showed for all that it was independent.

I think that in itself was a very clear indication that the former Minister and everyone else took these allegations very seriously. Is it fair to say, and perhaps the Deputy will have a view on this, that nobody took those penalty points accusations seriously? One should just look at what happened with the penalty points and the various stages.

One other thing that I forgot to say was that the former Minister then referred them to GSOC and GSOC at the moment is looking at them. That is a clear indication of the level of seriousness with which the allegations were taken. To be honest, in my view it was taken very seriously.