Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for coming in today. To carry on with the car analogy, I appreciate that the Department is not a back seat driver but it is our job to make sure that the Department makes sure that the Garda Commissioner and senior Garda management are passing their NCT every year but from what we are reading, they are not.

I am going to ask a series of questions and would appreciate if the witnesses would indicate in their answers whether they are speaking on behalf of the Department or in a personal capacity, that is, on the back of departmental or personal knowledge because there is a difference. I understand that the witnesses have not been in the Department forever and they cannot know everything. That is impossible because they have only been in their current roles for a limited period. However, I ask them to distinguish between departmental knowledge and their own knowledge and to specify when they need to find out more information.

We had a very long engagement last week and a lot of questions were raised. Regarding the financial reports from 2006, 2008 and 2010, are the witnesses saying that the Department had no knowledge whatsoever of their existence? What level of knowledge did the Department have of the existence of all three reports?