Mr. John Twomey:

At the Policing Authority and here this morning, what we have endeavoured to do is accept responsibility. We have set out what we see as the issues right throughout the entire organisation, starting with the Commissioner and going right through at all the various levels. We have put that in writing and we said it at the previous meeting. We said it most recently at the meeting with the Policing Authority. We accept that there were governance issues and failings at management level. We accept that there were issues in respect of the systems. We accept that there were issues regarding the processes and training and that there was a combination of issues involved. This started in 2006 and it runs for that period. The system has changed. There was a lack of training and supervision. What we have tried to do both in Assistant Commissioner O'Sullivan’s report but also in our most recent public appearances at the Policing Authority is acknowledge each and every one of those elements of what went wrong and address them all. I have accepted responsibility here again today for the failings that happened, and the acting Commissioner did so on the previous occasion. What I am doing this morning - and what we have provided in writing - is setting out how we believe we are going to address the situation. That applies across the entire organisation.

We have brought in the Kennedy Institute of Maynooth University to look at the behaviours. One can have all the systems, governance and processes, but one must have the proper cultures and behaviours guided by the proper values because that is where the real learning comes out of all of this. We have addressed each and every one of those elements that we believe is necessary in order to ensure that this will not happen again. We are looking at this crisis as an opportunity to ensure that into the future all of our actions will be guided by the right behaviours and values. We have said before that what we want are people doing the right thing even when nobody is looking. That is where we are trying to move to, and we have brought in a variety of different measures to ensure we will do that. We are committed to doing that and to delivering it. What is central to all of that is our code of ethics. We in senior management have already undergone training on the code of ethics and the restorative practice training with the Kennedy Institute. We are taking the lead by having senior management undergoing this training at the outset. It is not a simple fix. It is not accurate to say that if we fix this problem, the rest of it will be solved. There are myriad problems and that is what we are trying to do. We are trying to bring a whole-of-organisation approach to this.