Shane Cassells (Meath West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Listening to the evidence here this morning and what has been said to my colleagues, what is most striking, from this last exchange in particular, is the divergence of views, especially in that last exchange between Mr. Ruane and Mr. Culhane. Sometimes the early exchanges were bordering on hostility towards each other, with people needing to make freedom of information, FOI, requests to get information. This is all from people who are supposed to be on the same side, which is the side of the people, in order to give proper evidence and ensure ultimately the correct expenditure of public money in order that people can be satisfied their hard-earned money is spent appropriately and accounted for. If we as committee members are surprised, one can imagine that people looking in are aghast at that last exchange and what has transpired here this morning. This is from the civilian side of the force, not even the officers. Mr. Barrett said he had spent a lifetime ensuring the proper expenditure of money in multinationals and that it would not happen there, but it is unreal that it happens repeatedly in the public sector, with these issues being illuminated.

At the heart of this is the misappropriation of funds in the force that is responsible for justice in this State. As Mr. Culhane said, it was a culture that went back to the 1960s. It is fair to say that the swinging sixties seem to have been kept going to the present day. If Austin Powers had turned up in his time machine in Templemore, he would not have known that he was in a different decade given the testimony we have listened to.

Keeping to the report around which the Chairman has asked us to frame our remarks, recommendation No. 4 says that, "Garda Staff assigned to administrative roles in the College had no training or experience in administration ... no knowledge of Public Financial Procedures (the Blue Book) [as Mr. Howard said, the roadmap] and associated governance codes [for] Public Procurement ... Risk Management", and then it goes on to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the Government Accounting Unit. Being fair, does Mr. Kelly believe this is a simple case of the people who were in situnot being skilled and not having the necessary competence rather than a wilful misappropriation of funds or maybe even corruption? Did they in fact believe that the surplus money was their money, as he pointed out at the beginning of his opening remarks, quoting Deputy Commissioner Rice at the time? Is it the result of the arrangements that were in place, which Mr. Kelly touches on, and the effect of these arrangements going back to the 1980s? In terms of capitation grants and at a time when things were going well and surpluses were being accumulated, as Mr. Kelly said, every time a scheme was dreamed up, there was another bank account and things were kept on an individual basis rather than a cumulative one. Does he believe it is fair to paint everyone with the same brush, that there was wilful misappropriation, or was it the case that there was incompetence?