Mr. John O'Callaghan:

If I could clarify for the Deputy. I was sent the draft audit report by the head of internal audit in An Garda Síochána in September 2016. It was sent to me to fact check and to see if there was any reference to the Department that we might want to question or query. In his letter to me the head of internal audit requested that I treat the contents of the draft report as confidential and not divulge in any way the extract of the report that had been sent to me. He said that consent was given for the disclosure of the extract of the report to our legal professional adviser. Most of this is irrelevant as I was not named in the report, but at that stage the report was in draft and it was my understanding that he had equally sent it to everybody else who was named in the report asking them to check and to make sure they were happy and to consult any advisers that they wanted to consult. The report was still in that process until it became the completed report in March 2017. It is not about the fact that the report did not change much between coming to us in September 2016 and what it finally looked like. During that period it was out with all the parties that were named in it so they could go back to the internal auditor and for him to then finalise his report on the basis of the observations he received. It was not open to the Tánaiste to publish the report. It was not her report in the first instance and it was still in process at that point.