Ms Josephine Feehily:

I do not necessarily accept that final point. When it comes to fair procedures, the bar for invoking any kind of power that would have an impact on a person's livelihood is enormously high. That is the first thing. The second thing is we have to read the Act as a whole, and the Garda Commissioner's personal accountability was to the Minister and not to us. Third, and the policing-security split comes into play here, I have always taken the view that that section would be more likely to be relevant to something the authority knew but no one else did. When the body that has the decision-making power has a full line of sight, not only on material around security the authority has but also on that to which the authority does not have access, the idea we would take a position where we had no direct accountability or responsibility, and where the half-picture we had was very much available to the decision-making authority, does not seem to me to fit with reading the Act as a whole. Does that make sense?