Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is always a difficult one whenever we seek information relating to the Garda or associated bodies. The Department of Justice will come back and say these are independent bodies and at the same time indicate that it is engaging Garda management on the issues without specifying what "engaging" means - it is a broad term.

The WRC was scheduled to meet on 26 January. Perhaps we could seek an update. I do not know who we ask for the update - maybe the Chair can give us clarification on that - as to whether this issue was resolved.

The particular issue relates to the operation of GSOC. From the correspondence we received, people make a complaint to GSOC, GSOC then "employs" - I use that term broadly as well - members of the Garda to carry out parts of the investigation and, in some cases, the commission has its own investigators. It would be useful, because we have the commission coming before us in a number of weeks, to ask it for a breakdown of the complaints that it dealt with and the investigations that it carried out, for example, even last year, as to how many were carried out by the commissions internally and how many were carried out by members of the Garda at its request. Clearly, in this instance, when there are senior gardaí who have been refusing to engage with GSOC, it is having quite an impact on the delivery of GSOC's already poor timeframes for addressing investigations.