Mr. John Murphy:

I think the Deputy was conflating a couple of different things when he mentioned correspondence sent by registered post and he mentioned an earlier date. I think the document to which he is referring in 2012 is a substantial witness statement which was forwarded at the beginning of December 2012 to the Minister, which we received and which was accompanied by a very large volume of supporting documentation, over 5,000 pages of supporting documentation. That material was examined in the Department but the Deputy needs to understand the context in which this was being provided. The investigations we referring to about are those by an authorised officer under section 19 of the Companies Act 1990 and they go back to 1997. They have their roots in the McCracken tribunal which reported in August 1997. At that time the then Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment appointed the authorised officer to examine books and documents of Celtic Helicopters and subsequently over the following two years the authorised officer was authorised to conduct a total of seven investigations. Of those, four were completed and three have continued since then and are not yet complete.

The witness statement that was forwarded in December 2012 had originally been requested back in 2004 and 2005 by the Garda in order to complete the documentation that had been made available to it. Over that period of time in the early 2000s, on a number of occasions large amounts of material that had been identified by the authorised officer were forwarded to all the relevant authorities. The Minister is on record as confirming that.

The witness statement that was forwarded in December 2012 was not new.