Ms Josephine Feehily:

If the word "faction" jars with the Deputy, I am happy to withdraw it. In the engagement with Deputy Brophy, I was trying to convey that the Garda organisation is full of different perspectives, including the analysis service and the uniformed service. In this instance there were certainly differing views within the uniformed service. I was trying to convey that a body that oversees an organisation must be very careful not to get involved with one side of an argument. That is what that word was intended to convey.

Our 20 meetings and meetings at official level were not with the uniformed service but with the Garda Síochána. The committee's witnesses are members of the Garda Síochána. They are not sworn members but they are members of the Garda Síochána from our point of view and we oversee the organisation. There were non-sworn members at these meetings. Earlier, I was trying to convey that in order for us to do our job properly, in a statutory sense, we must be able to deal openly with those people who the Garda Commissioner designates as the representative body people for that organisation.

The analysis service was fully represented. Who came to our meetings was a matter for the analysis service and the Garda Commissioner. At no point had we any difficulty. If the Garda Commissioner had included Ms West and Ms Galligan at those meetings, that would have been fine. That was conveyed in the first telephone call to Ms West. When she asked to attend a meeting with the analysis service we said it was a matter for the analysis service and the Garda Commissioner who attends the meetings. We are having a meeting but we are not saying who is coming. We are simply inviting people to a meeting. That was conveyed to them. The only way we can do our job properly is to work transparently and insist that we get people at meetings, so we can go back to the Garda Commissioner and say what the representatives said and did or did not provide.