Mr. John McKeon:

I think hair-splitting is happening here to a certain extent. We received a final report. There was no subsequent finalisation of the report. It was received on 15 August, with a letter from the Data Protection Commissioner, setting out the steps that the Data Protection Commission would like the Department to take. It stated it would take one week for one matter, three weeks for another and six weeks for an implementation plan. We identified issues in the report and in the letter. We also identified inconsistencies. We wanted to clarify those with the Data Protection Commissioner and we wanted a meeting to do that. We asked for an early meeting. The Data Protection Commissioner did not feel that would be appropriate and told us so. The commissioner told us she would meet with us when we accepted her findings and delivered an implementation plan. It would be difficult for us to develop an implementation plan if we did not accept the findings and, even if we did, it would be difficult to develop an implementation plan where we felt there were inconsistencies and a lack of clarity about some of the findings and the analysis. That is why we wanted a meeting. While I do not object to this, the Data Protection Commissioner did not feel it would be appropriate to meet until we had an implementation plan and that is fully her prerogative. There is no contention-----