Mr. Ian Drennan:

I thank the Senator. Human cost is a poignant term and I hope none of the individuals concerned will mind me saying so but many people were badly damaged by this experience.

There is not much else I can say about it, other than to point out how there is a narrative in the public domain which, suffice it to say, is not complete. There are dots to be joined and bits missing. If and when the full story comes out, it will put a different complexion on things. Certain issues were ventilated in court, while certain others were not. In fairness to the individuals concerned, one in particular, it would not be appropriate or fair for me to go beyond that, other than to say I have observed this at first hand and chosen my words carefully.

I appreciate the sentiment in wanting more to come out of this. I will go this far and give the committee a high-level response. In the normal course of events, if the Senator sees Mr. A hitting Mr. B over the head on the street with an iron bar and a garda asks him for a statement, the Senator will say he was walking down Molesworth Street when he observed Mr. A hitting Mr. B over the head with an iron bar and that he was wearing a red jumper or whatever the case may be. Compare that with trying to take a statement from an audit partner. An audit of a listed company is a large undertaking, takes a considerable amount of time and involves a substantial number of individuals. It is not really something that lends itself to rocking up to someone's door and asking for his or her statement. It requires a great deal of thought. Like any professional services firm, audit firms must, rightly, have regard to their reputation which they guard jealously. They must guard against their litigation risks carefully. As such, giving a statement in that context would not be the same as someone making a statement about what he or she had seen. What subsequently ensued in the way the statements came into being was, to some extent, a reflection of that and its complexity. The trial judge formed the view that all concerned either completely lost sight of the fact that what was happening was inappropriate or failed to recognise, in the first instance, that it was inappropriate.

While I appreciate the Senator's position, it is difficult for me to go much beyond that. Suffice it to say, however, the document I prepared and that we discussed at some length earlier will, if and when he reads it, give the Senator a much better understanding of how the process came to crystallise and the moving parts within it ultimately fell foul of the prohibition on the coaching of witnesses. The contamination issue is tied to it, as are the judicial findings surrounding a failure to investigate and investigative bias. These issues all relate to the two witnesses and the mechanism or manner in which their statements were obtained over two years or thereabouts. It is completely different from someone stating he or she witnessed something which happened on Kildare Street at X time.