Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The aspect I want to deal with relates to the homicide review. It was around homicide classification and the investigation by the Garda in 2017. Essentially, this letter is giving us some reassurance that a report was published in December 2019. The letter states, "the classification did not impact the quality of the subsequent investigations undertaken [but they wanted] ... to prevent a reoccurrence ..." To be honest, what concerns me about that and the reason I wanted to raise it is there has been a recent newspaper article that makes me doubt that information. A guy, a civilian, was appointed by the Policing Authority. I am reading from a newspaper article. Mr. John Mooney wrote it but I cannot see the date. I can provide it to the clerk to the committee. The article states, "a civilian appointed by the Policing Authority to lead the GSAS after an international competition, resigned unexpectedly in 2019 shortly after accepting the role." There had been a whistleblower. She was the deputy head of the Garda Síochána Analysis Service. She was concerned with the classification. This is fairly recent.

I do not want to accept this at face value where there are reports that indicate that there are people who are pretty much saying otherwise. There was a couple of them who refused to sign off on the report on the grounds that it contained unreliable data and who say they were subsequently excluded from compiling a report on the issue for the Policing Authority.

I will give the Chairman the newspaper report.