Ms Nóirín O'Sullivan:

Advice was not given to me under section 41. Section 41 of the Garda Síochána Act is a provision under which matters can be informed to the Minister. I received a report from the deputy commissioner, Mr. Ó Cualáin, which attached a report from the head of legal. As Mr. Ruane stated, there is client confidentiality and privilege attaching, but I have no difficulty in saying what I did on receipt of the report. We had had discussions at the executive level about setting up this committee, making sure that all of the individuals that needed to be informed about this were informed and that we got an holistic view of precisely what we were talking about. We then decided that the group would be established and would include representatives from the Department of Justice and Equality so that everyone would be completely sighted and au fait with what we were doing, that being, trying to find out the context of this. The Magee report was in 2008. We wanted to know who had knowledge and sight of this. It is important to say that, in the funding arrangements that were put in place in the college, the Departments of Justice and Equality and Finance extensively advised on those structures. We were trying to establish what we were dealing with and, more importantly, what needed to be done.