Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I remind the committee that the issues around the public domain and the matters of public concern were unearthed in this committee room. This is clearly not a court of law, but it clearly is the Committee of Public Accounts of the Oireachtas and is regularly cited as the most influential and powerful committee of the Oireachtas. Vested in us is the responsibility to follow the money from a value-for-money perspective and to follow the attendant processes and procedures. That is what we should do.

It falls to us to get to the bottom of these matters. For the purposes of assisting the committee, let me say that there is a very long historical hinterland to the story. As a Deputy said it goes back decades. I do not believe that we are in a position to, nor should we attempt to, examine all of that. Rather, we should look to the here and now, the duration of the stewardship of the current Commissioner, as Accounting Officer, to examine exactly the turn of events, the audit, its procedures, the quality of the audit and so on. In other words, the issues that we began to consider and examine in this committee room last week are what we should focus on.

Deputy Cullinane's point is that we need an orderly approach to this and conduct our business in a way that sheds light rather than simply heat. That point is fairly made. Any suggestion that holding the Accounting Officer, in this case the Garda Commissioner, to account amounts to a witch-hunt is very inaccurate and very dangerous from the point of view of the work that we do as a committee.

I suggest that we decide we will investigate these matters, and look to set out the parameters of our inquiries and their sequencing. We need to put the Garda Commissioner, Garda management and all others on notice that we are looking for their full co-operation and active participation in this procedure.

I want to make a final comment. Maybe this is a matter of technicality and detail for people from the auditing world. I have to say I attach very significant importance to dates on documents. I think most people would be in the same position as myself. I am shocked to hear not that an alteration was made to a document, but that the alteration was not made explicitly clear. I do not think that is the correct way to proceed. I have no interest in a witch-hunt or anything else. We have to be determined to do our jobs and our work. I am not looking for a deferral mechanism to push this down the pipe. These issues are at play now. They are of huge public concern. They are relevant. They fall squarely within our remit. We should decide precisely how we are going to do this. I refer to the dates and so on. Maybe the Garda Commissioner and her staff do not watch Oireachtas TV, but if they happen to tune into this episode of the Committee of Public Accounts, they should be on notice that we will be looking for all of them, individually and collectively, to co-operate fully and honestly with our inquiries.