Ms Lois West:

I think there would be a variety of different reasons, it would not be possible today to try to quantify it. One can see where there would be debates about the classification of an incident, some would be more in a grey area and could be difficulty to determine straight away. I think part of the difficulty has been that PULSE is seen as optional at times, or it is one of the last things to be considered.

As an investigation progresses, obviously everybody involved in that investigation is extremely busy and it has been felt at times, there has been more of a slack attitude towards updating PULSE, that it has been seen as less important than other aspects. There certainly seems to be that misunderstanding around the crime classification. Ms Galligan and I did work in September with members of PDIM, the policy development, implementation and monitoring, group to put together a more comprehensive clarification of the crime counting rules to try to make the interpretation of them much clearer and easier to follow, so that everybody would be consistently applying the same logic. There are very many elements to it. As Ms Galligan said they will be looked at in the round as part of the new review.

In terms of moving it forward, we will fully support it. There is quite a significant team that has been put together. We have high hopes for that team but one of the things that would be important for me is to address the fact that sometimes An Garda Síochána feels that it has to resolve all the issues on its own and is not very good at asking for help or saying when it does not have adequate resources. There is a culture of making do. There is a great can do attitude. Fantastic work goes on in An Garda Síochána and a lot of that is down to the goodwill of the people who work there and their determination to work very hard to serve the public and to do the best they can, but at times we need to ask for help, whether that is money, external expertise or assistance from other agencies, even others within the Department of Justice and Equality. It can take more than just one body to resolve a particular issue.