Ms Josephine Feehily:

I appreciate that is how they perceived it and how they felt. I can only tell the Deputy, based on facts, what we did and the work that we did. At no point did we decline. That is not something I recall or can agree with in terms of their testimony. I cannot accept either that they were not contacted. Each time they made contact, they got a response - twice on the telephone and once in writing. Each time they were thanked. Each time they were assured we were not letting this issue drop and we were live to all of their concerns.

I accept this is perception. They perceive things in a certain way. Our belief is that we responded each time and that we persisted with all of the issues. I suppose we felt that the most important thing we could do was persist in not letting this matter go away. We persisted in ensuring that anything that came to the authority had to have complete sign-off by the analysis service. Our perception and our belief is that we did not ignore their concerns. We treated them as part of that intelligence that we had. We persisted and continue to persist. As I indicated earlier, we are not quite as reassured about the current state of play as they represented to the committee, based on our broader work.