Ms Josephine Feehily:

Certainly, the discussion around classification is very technical. It takes place within a set of rules called the crime accounting rules, which are even more technical and in some cases were at the heart of the issues. Professional disagreement about the balance of probability can go on and on. In many cases, the classification debate is technical. It would be unfortunate if that unnecessarily worried people who are unaffected. That is one reason we handle a lot of this in private.

We will be uneasy, however, until we are assured about the quality of the investigation. It took us until February to be prepared to say we are now satisfied that there was an investigation. What worries us is whether, if the classification was flawed at the beginning, the Garda will do the right things to make sure an investigation proceeds in a manner that is compliant with the European Convention on Human Rights in respect of securing crime scenes and following lines of inquiry. That has been our question since last April, and we are not there yet regarding quality. We are at the point, albeit quite a bit later, where we now have evidence of significant investigative activity in all of the cases. That is reassuring.