Mr. Tony O'Brien:

Can I finish the sequence - would that be all right? Otherwise, I will lose my train of thought. When arranging to have the meeting, they did not signal that an apology was to be given because they did not understand that they were being asked to give an apology. That is one point in the letter. I subsequently asked them how was it that the organisation we are referring to here was able to say that these conversations took place and so on, and each of the individuals received a telephone call in which they were asked, "Were you asked to give an apology? Did you give an apology? Have you told them you did not give an apology?". They confirmed that those conversations had occurred, but that was consistent with the fact that they had not understood - or had not been effectively communicated with, whichever way we care to put it - that an apology was to form part of that meeting. They arranged and went to the meeting without having in mind the giving of an apology. They left the meeting with the individual concerned, and when I met them on Friday I asked how could it then be that when this issue was queried there was confirmation that an apology had been given. In the case of one of the people involved, the exact way it was put to me was, "When I was asked had I apologised, I said I had." I asked why the person had said this, and he said, "Because the person I was talking to became upset and I told her how sorry I was about everything." When he was asked whether he had apologised, he answered it in the context of what he had said, which was not the same as the context in which he was being asked the question. At the outset, there was a miscommunication about whether an apology was to be given in that meeting, and everything else followed from that. It is not necessary to conclude that any of these parties are lying. What the WIDA letter says is correct. That information was given to them by the two individuals. There is no question-----