Shane Ross (Dublin Rathdown, Independent) | Oireachtas source

That is how it actually developed. As I said in the report, I had looked for, and initially preferred, a retired judge. That was my preference when I met Mr. Hickey and when I spoke to Mr. Mulvey. We eventually agreed that we would be happy as long as we had a significant presence on that independent inquiry who would be there to ensure that nothing was done in any way to disguise the truth and also to see to it that the pursuit of the truth was absolute and could be achieved. That was what we agreed at the time. I would have been happy as long as we had that presence there. However, it had to be someone who was utterly independent and had absolutely no connection with the OCI. The important thing was that the OCI would not be investigating itself, which is what Mr. Hickey had originally sought. Yesterday, I asked the committee to again consider the consequences of allowing that to go forward.

If the only investigating body looking into the controversy arising from the sale of tickets in Brazil had been an internal OCI investigating body, as that organisation envisaged, we would not have got a report in the same vein as the Moran report.

Deputy Troy was somewhat critical about the extent to which we had asked the committee about the course we should take and he may have been fair in doing so, although I do not recall the exact chronology. We did contact the committee but we were minded all along to proceed with a non-statutory body. We took on board much of what was said by other people and that is what we are doing today. It is sometimes difficult at committee meetings when one is asked what one intends to do. We say we want to discuss it and hear people's views but matters arise from this report in respect of which we have not yet made decisions. Those decisions will be influenced by what members say today, as well as other factors. We will not rush to judgment in the first week but we will make decisions and we will do so promptly.

I will now address the question of whether the inquiry was to have been statutory or non-statutory. The criticisms are that most of the significant bodies, people or entities involved have not contributed to the compilation of the report because they abstained from the inquiry. It has been stated that only one key stakeholder was involved, implying that if there had been a statutory body, all the other stakeholders would have given evidence. I have no reason to believe that is the case. My guess is that if we had opted for a statutory body, we would be in no better a place today and that we might be in a much worse place. The process would have been bogged down in legal problems and we would have been in and out of the High Court with a large number of the bodies in question, which would have been claiming, perhaps rightly, that self-incrimination was a danger for them. We may or may not have got sympathetic hearings in these cases.

It is easy to say we should have compelled witnesses to come in but I am not sure we could have compelled any witnesses. Everybody in this committee and the Committee of Public Accounts is well aware of the difficulties involved in compelling witnesses. I was on the Committee of Public Accounts for many years and we tried to compel witnesses many times without being able to get them to come in. My guess is that we would not have produced a report if we had gone down the statutory route and we would certainly have taken on vast expense without much in the way of a result, a situation which might also have gone on for a long time. I do not know the answer to the Deputy's question but, in hindsight, I believe we made the right decision. A large number of the people to whom we are referring are based abroad and it is difficult to compel such people to give evidence to this committee. The judge was given the right to recommend a statutory committee if he thought there should be one, and he made it absolutely clear in his report that he did not think there should be such a committee. It would be wrong to second-guess the judge on this because he is in the best position to make a judgment on that issue. We could go with a statutory commission now but we are not going to do that.

We are very largely led by the judge's conclusions because he is in the best position to make that decision and recommendation.

Deputy Troy stated that the judge said the failure of people to appear was a major impediment to the inquiry. He used the word "impediment". It was a major impediment to finding out certain things, particularly the provenance and destination of the tickets. That is absolutely clear. It is my very strong view that the judge overcame the major impediment.

There is absolutely no doubt about the invaluable new evidence that we have in this inquiry. That tends to be ignored. The emails are the centre of all the ticketing activity into which we were looking. Those emails, which are authentic, unchallenged, documented and independent, tell us a large amount about what was happening between the OCI and those parties that did not give evidence. They have not been challenged and I doubt that they will because they are the real McCoy. They indicate what was going on. They tell us about the relationship between Pat Hickey and Marcus Evans. It was continuing to go on. The emails are the basis of the judge's conclusion - reached with absolute authority - that Pro10 was a company set up as a cover or front. The evidence we got was powerful from the start. We did not succeed in getting Pat Hickey to give evidence but all his lieutenants did so. I could name them for the members. Mr. Hickey's staff gave evidence and they confirmed a lot of points in the emails and allowed us to reach conclusions that are perfectly evidence based.

Not only did we get the evidence in the emails, we also got the evidence of the people involved who saw what was going on. There was a tendency to ignore this. We got evidence from Sport Ireland also. It is easy to say that certain individuals or entities did not participate but people should look at the report.