Ms Josephine Feehily:

I will answer and then I will ask the chief executive to give details of what happens at those meetings. We declined a seat on the governance board because we are an oversight body and we would be entirely conflicted if we were part of an internal governance structure. We have taken the same position in respect of many other invitations we have received from the Garda to get involved in internal governance. We cannot stand above it and challenge if we are part of it. We decided to ask one of our senior team to attend in an observer capacity so that we could learn what goes on at the meetings. The chief executive will elaborate on that.

One of our other enduring concerns about governance in the Garda is that there are too many governance boards. Their discrete roles are not entirely clear and there is a lot of internal conflict over who sits on governance boards.