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

Without rehashing the report, Mr. Kelly makes a point of referring to this culture at the root of the problem in his conclusions. He said earlier that as an extensive part of his audit, he spent three months at Templemore, talking to people - not just looking at the balance sheets - and getting the background behind the figures. Mr. Kelly said in his opening remarks that the culture may still exist. Given his strong beliefs, his statement that this culture might still exist, his background checks, can he tell me who is responsible for fuelling this culture? Fuelling a culture has to come from a central point. I do not want to hear about culture as an abstract idea, that is not the job of this committee. If at the end of all these hearings, we have a nice tidy package, that it was just the culture going back to the 1960s.1980s, we will have achieved nothing. Mr. Kelly will have done himself a disservice if this falls under "culture". Who was fuelling that culture? Who was keeping the information suppressed? Who was making sure that people such as Mr. Barrett were having to put in FOIs?

There is a fear here that by attacking the force, we are attacking every junior garda. We are not. We are trying to find out who is fuelling that culture because Mr. Kelly's report speaks for itself. What I believe people want to hear from this committee is the chain of command of how the off-balance sheet activity and "enterprise", as Mr. Barrett called it developed and existed. I would appreciate if Mr. Kelly could start to categorise the chain of command for us in that culture and to make it real and tangible for us today.