Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 14 February 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality

Garda Homicide Statistics: Discussion

10:30 am

Mr. Michael Finn:

I do not know if a deliberate effort was made to exclude, say, Dr. Singh in regard to it. If we were to separate the investigators from the analysts, the investigators did their piece of work in regard to giving reassurance that yes an investigation was carried out into each of the 41 homicides. That was probably the initial piece of work that was done, and that was responded to the Policing Authority in April and an assurance was given. We are happy that an investigation was carried out in regard to each of those 41 homicides, that they went through either the courts system or the coroner's system, or that some of them were currently still live investigations. That was the reassurance given, and the context in which that reassurance was given to the Policing Authority. There were issues in that. If the analysts had raised this issue in regard to data quality, it would have been prudent that we would have gone back to the analysts to ask if they were happy that we had addressed their issues. In hindsight, looking back, that is where we should have done it differently in my opinion.

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