Ms Nóirín O'Sullivan:

There are a lot of points in the Deputy's question so maybe I will deal with them in rotation and if I leave something out the Deputy might come back to it. First, in Mr. Kelly's interim audit report, I am not aware of criticisms of me personally. I am very familiar with the report. I am quite happy to go through those if the Deputy wishes. The point I would make on Mr. McGee's appearance here at the committee is that he appeared here as a voluntary witness to assist the committee and he, as other witnesses, is an office holder. My understanding is he was forthright and open with the committee in respect of his interactions on the email I see here on the screen. I cannot get into the mindset of Mr. McGee as to why he authored this email. What I can say is the Deputy asked about decisive action. I am very clear and I have always been very clear on my decisive action around matters such as this. My decision is they need to be actioned. What was very clear to me, when these matters were brought to my attention and in the days subsequent to 27 July, was that there had been, on perusal of files of my office, interactions with a number of different offices. There had been interactions with the Department and with outside external advisers to try to fix these issues. What I was not cited on is what had been done. Part of the purpose of the committee we established was to gather all of that information and to compile and collate it and find out what precisely had been done. It was very clear in the correspondence I saw at that time that the then Commissioner had issued instructions. What I was not clear on was whether those instructions had been acted upon or not. On the completion of Mr. Kelly's draft interim report in September 2016, it was evident that some of these actions and what had been agreed by the Commissioner, both in 2008 and 2010, were not actioned. It was important in my mindset that we got a complete picture. I also want to be clear - I am sure the Deputy will appreciate this - that I absolutely respect the constitutional office of the Comptroller and Auditor General and I absolutely respect the parliamentary position of this committee. What I have said is we are all of the time learning lessons. We have learned lessons from this process. I have heard quite clearly and very carefully considered what the Comptroller and Auditor General has said. At that time, my mindset was we needed to be in possession of complete information to be able to make an informed decision and to be able to fully inform everybody who needed to be informed of precisely what had been done. We were dealing, as the Deputy said, with four-decade old structures. Nobody knew what had been done and nobody gave us succinct answers about what had been done. The collation exercise was to make sure we had complete information. I respect what the Comptroller and Auditor General says, that his office would be willing to accept partial information and that is a lesson. From here on in - and even before now - partial information will be supplied. The Deputy asked me-----