Colm Brophy (Dublin South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I fully appreciate what Ms West has said. I appreciate and echo her sentiments that there are many excellent officers in An Garda Síochána who work above and beyond the call of duty to ensure the Garda delivers on solving crime and in its day-to-day work. However, I want to go back to the other part of what Ms West said. It strikes me, listening to the answer she gave - and I do not want to put words into her mouth - that there was effectively a systematic way of disregarding information on the part of management in An Garda Síochána over these years in that it escalated a matter if it did not like it. Unfortunately for these members, they got caught this time around in that there are new structures in place - the Policing Authority, etc. - which meant it was not possible for them just to take the stuff and ignore what the analysts were saying. This incident escalated out of that. They had to effectively cut the witnesses out of the reporting loop. Is that a fair assessment?