Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I agree strongly that the dates of audits and the statements are as important as the signature. We definitely need to have this dealt with much earlier. I raised this matter with the Tánaiste on 9 February on Leaders' Questions. I was looking for a copy of the draft report that had been leaked to a newspaper and there was quite an extensive article in January as to parliamentary questions. I was told by the Tánaiste at that point that the Committee of Public Accounts and the justice committee had debated this at length. I went back that same afternoon and I disputed this with the Tánaiste. I could find no record of it. I pursued her for six or eight weeks, forwards and backwards, and she corrected the record in April in the Dáil. That was during the debate on the Charlton commission, at the beginning of February. It is very important, and it was something that was quite interesting last week, that the Commissioner agreed the interim report came in draft form to her in September 2016. Last week, on the record before the committee, she said there had been no change to the draft report. The report on Templemore we debated has an interim report dated February 2017 which was published in late March or early April. The role of the Department of Justice and Equality in this is important because when something is leaked to a newspaper it screams of frustration that there was something that was required to be publicly available. There are questions to be asked when we are speaking about this with regard to the Department of Justice and Equality and what its knowledge was.

Why was this, when there was no change made to it between September and February?

It did not take that long to read the report. It was quite clear that what was included in that report was very significant. Why did it take that length of time when we are talking about the frustration in bringing this into the public domain with the Garda? There is an equal question regarding the Department of Justice and Equality bringing it into the public domain. I want to see that dealt with by the people who come in front of us as well.