Bobby Aylward (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Having listened to the evidence given by the witnesses today and on the last day, it is unbelievable that it took until May last year when Mr. Kelly really got to the nuts and bolts of what happened to find out about the mismanagement that has gone on since as far back as the college's upgrade to a third level college in the 1980s. In that length of time cover ups, mismanagement and non-existent corporate governance were occurring in a college that we all had great faith in and through which we put our future gardaí. Here we are and it took until last year to come to the evidence we now hear around the litany of mismanagement. With report after report, the Walsh report, the Fennelly report and the McGee report, it has taken until now to find out what is wrong. It is totally unbelievable that this could be allowed to happen in a modern society and that the system was left in place for so long. We could go through it all day but I will not review what everyone has already said.

Let us go back to previous reports back in 2008 where the CEO noted that the director of finance be authorised to conduct a full and comprehensive audit of all financial activity in the college. The Garda Síochána Internal Audit Service, GIAS, was not informed of the proposed audit at that time. Recommendations put in place at the time included that 13 bank accounts be closed; a new college administrator role was to be established at superintendent rank; and new processes were to be put in place and reviewed at weekly performance accountability framework meetings. Of the 12 specific recommendations from the director of finance's report, only two were implemented. Of the six points agreed in correspondence between the commissioner and the chief administrative officer, none was implemented. Why was this? Why did they not happen, after all the reports down the years?

In 2012 - and I have all the recommendations marked off here - compliance with public procurement requirements was implemented on the recommendations of the Garda inspectorate at the time and the development review group. On 16 July 2015 another report stated it was not happy with the system but the system was still not fixed. I ask Mr. Culhane to explain why not.