Ms Nóirín O'Sullivan:

Section 41 is a mechanism contained within the Garda Síochána Act to inform the Department and the Minister of certain issues of significant interest and issues that in my opinion need to be brought to the attention of the Minister and the Department. It was always my intention that these matters would be brought to the attention of the Department because it was clear to me from the perusal of the files I had available to me that the Department had knowledge of this going back several years. My emphasis was on making sure that the Department was involved and fully sighted of the work of the working group which was pulling together these materials. My understanding is that Mr. Dunne had engaged with the Department to see if it had any files that could fill in some of the missing links, to fill in the Deputy's question about how this came about. In my view, having the Department engaged and involved in that process fulfilled my obligations to keep the Department of Justice and Equality informed of what we were doing. Once Mr. Kelly's report was done and the process in terms of the internal audit started, then the Comptroller and Auditor General was informed. As I have said, and I have no difficulty repeating it, if I knew then what I know now I would certainly, with the partial information we had available to us, inform the Comptroller and Auditor General-----