Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am ruling as Chairman that we are now moving on. With regard to the financial issue, I want to draw the attention of everybody here and everybody watching to the fact that we have the Accounting Officer of the Department of Justice and Equality here. He is responsible to the Oireachtas for the Vote and he gave verbal sanction to this matter. A letter subsequently arrived. We also have the Accounting Officer of An Garda Síochána here, who is satisfied that he got his sanction and did the job he was required to do. We have information that the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform subsequently gave written sanction but that the matter had proceeded on the basis of the original verbal sanction because the job needed to be done. We have two sanctions from two Accounting Officers here in person and we have notification of a third sanction from somebody else. We can come back to look at this when we come to examine 2017 expenditure as part of next year's audit. In the meantime I am ruling that we have statements from two Accounting Officers here, who are satisfied with the process. They are the people who are answerable to the committee so this topic is now closed. We had agreed to only give this matter 15 minutes and we have done-----