Mr. Hugh Hume:

If there was a basis to it, then I would like to hope that we would issue a recommendation to the Garda Commissioner for discipline, bearing in mind that a protected disclosure that we undertake could end up going to the DPP. It could decide whether to prosecute or not. We may take a protected disclosure to the Commissioner and ask them to consider a discipline action, or it may end up, as the Deputy rightly said, as a systemic recommendation for change. All of those are potential outcomes, as well as discontinuance because it could not be progressed.

If we make a systemic recommendation for change, we would write to the Garda Commissioner and set out what we expect to happen, as we do with all our systemic recommendations. We should get a reply back explaining what has happened and what they intend to do on the matter. We share our systemic recommendations with a number of different oversight bodies, so that they can track any changes we think are appropriate.