Mr. Geoff Knupfer:

I hope my list of those questions is correct. I ask the Deputy to pull me up if I miss anything.

No, we do not think "Bloodlands" has caused damage. What concerned us enormously at the time was whether people believed we might be passing information to the programme makers, which we certainly were not. I think there were one or two discussions just prior to broadcast about names attributed to members of the commission portrayed on screen, and the programme makers very kindly removed those names. There have been a number of documentaries on radio and television, in Ireland and beyond, covering the work of the commission, and in I think every single one we have made appeals for information and tried to explain that we are not remotely interested in what people did, other than if it would help us fine-tune the search process. We always make appeals for information on the basis that we do not want to speak to third parties. We would rather speak to the primary sources because that gives the best information we could possibly ask for. I think all three of us have said today and in the past that witnesses have nothing to fear from talking to us. We are not sure why people have not come forward. We cannot explain it. We know that there are other people out there who were involved in these events and have not come forward. To appeal to them to do so is really as far as we can go. As I said, why they will not speak to us directly we are at a loss to understand. I do not think anybody is putting pressure on them not to do so - not as far as we are aware, anyway. A member of our organisation leads on our media very proficiently. He has done it for a number of years and makes a great job of it, but you can only make so many appeals before the broadcast media switch off and the print media say, "We have done all that before." They are looking for something new, not a rehash of what we have done in the past. That is a big problem for us.

Lastly, the Deputy mentioned Bragan Bog and whether it is fenced off. No, it is not. It is open to anybody who wants to go there, but it is a very remote and wild area. It has its own microclimate. There can be blazing sunshine in Monaghan town while on Bragan Bog, just nine miles or ten miles or perhaps 12 km or 13 km away, it could be doing anything from snowing to cracking the flags. It is a very strange area in that respect. There is a lot of forestry up there and plantations that have been planted since the 1970s and some harvesting goes on from time to time.

We try as best we can to manage that with the forestry authorities and they have been enormously helpful to us over the years.

I hope I have answered all the Deputy's questions there. If there is anything else, I will gladly answer it if I can.