Mr. John Twomey:

I would like to add some specifics to the acting Garda Commissioner's comments. It is interesting that the Senator asked this question because we launch our internal culture audit today. Everybody who works in the organisation will begin today to take part in a culture audit, which is being led by Mr. Singh who can outline the details. We will identify what makes up the fabric of the organisation and what makes us think the way we think and act and behave in the way we do. That has not been done previously. This will be a benchmark, which will lead us to a detailed action plan as to how we can improve on the learning. All these reports provide us with opportunities to learn and the culture audit will do that as well.

We as a senior management team will undergo training on the code of ethics next Tuesday. We will provide strong leadership by acting on, and living up, to the nine pillars of the code ourselves. We will lead that from the front and demonstrate that in everything we do, including every action we take and every decision we make. From a cultural perspective and from an ethics perspective, we will provide that leadership from the front.

The Senator mentioned victims. We have a great deal of work done in this area and we will continue to improve that. How we provide empathy to all victims is one area that has shown considerable improvement in our public attitudes survey. We have victim services offices set up all around the country. We have a protective services bureau to provide specific highly trained skills to the most vulnerable victims. In the area of addiction, we have a great deal of work ongoing with other agencies, particularly in the various drug treatment centres in Dublin city centre as a key example. There is a lot of work going on and all the piecing together will improve bit by bit, day by day, the service that we provide but there will always be room to improve. This is a process and improvements will always be needed but these are simple examples from a cultural and ethical perspective, as well as from the perspective of victims, of the detail regarding the work we are doing.