Mr. Justice Rory MacCabe:

I will explain it in the following way. When I came in last January, the first thing I did was to ask to be briefed on the cases that were to hand and whether any of them had been around for a long time. Basically, I asked if there were any unexploded bombs around of which I needed to be aware. I was then briefed by different groups in GSOC. Listening to them, I asked how it was taking so long to close cases. There were cases that may have been going on for two or three years. I asked how it was possible they were not closed and when they would be closed. It is only when we dig down into the situation that we see the complexity that is involved.

A complaint arrives in many different ways. A member of the public can knock on the door at GSOC and come in. A complaint can be made by telephone call or arrive by email. Though the website, members of the public can access the online claims form, which is available not just in English and Irish but in eight other languages. Members of the public can also come to a Garda station to make a complaint. That is an issue to which I will return to later. It may have its own particular resonance. The first point of contact will be a caseworker. Caseworkers are people who are trained in examining cases. Their responsibility is to look at cases and to recommend whether a case is admissible in the first instance. Once the assessment process is done, it then proceeds either to investigation or it might get sent to An Garda Síochána. The powers the investigators have in GSOC are similar to the powers An Garda Síochána has.

Our instruction manual in GSOC is the Garda Síochána Act 2005 and, to a certain extent, the European Convention on Human Rights Act 2003. They form the instruction manual and we are bound by it. Behind that is the Constitution, because the European Convention on Human Rights Act and the Garda Síochána Act were mandated by the Oireachtas. The Constitution is a document that is mandated by the people. It is enshrined in the Constitution that due process is something to which the members or I, or anybody who is unfortunate enough to have to face the courts of Ireland, is entitled to as a right. Things like being informed of the charges involved, if there are charges, being entitled to legal representation, and being entitled to a fair trial, if it comes to it, in course of law are all rights everybody has. They are rights that accused persons in the normal criminal courts, as it were, are entitled to. They are also rights to which members of the Garda who are accused of wrongdoing are entitled.

The investigation process may involve interviews and cross-interviews. When one set of interviews is completed, it may be necessary to go back to the start and reinterivew people based on information that has arisen lately. That is not typical, but it is not abnormal. We could be faced with a situation where one case could absorb the entire resources of GSOC if it is to be properly investigated. In a situation where investigators typically have a caseload of about 60 cases each, perhaps members can understand the impact on resources if even one investigator is dedicated full-time to one investigation. It is often a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul in terms of the resources we have. It is almost impossible to be prescriptive as to how long an investigation is going to take.

Once the investigation is complete, the report comes to us as the commissioners. The way we operate at the moment is that we do a week on each. For example, Ms Logan might be on, making decisions this week, I will be on next week, and Mr. Hume will be on the following week. Once the investigation is complete, the senior investigating officer will submit a report to the commission for decision. That may be a decision to discontinue the investigation because we do not consider that wrongdoing has happened, a decision to pass it to the Garda Commissioner if we consider it a disciplinary matter, or a decision to submit it to the Director of Public Prosecutions, DPP.

Once it goes out of our hands, we are basically at the mercy of the Commissioner. While there is a requirement that disciplinary matters be dealt with within a specific time, it is often not possible to comply with that. Once we send the file to the DPP, it is within the discretion of the DPP to decide when to come back to us with the direction. The DPP has other fish to fry apart from us. That is a flavour of the investigative process. Once it comes back-----