Mr. Martin Callinan:

It is clear that since the establishment of the GSOC, we have been involved in excess of 3,900 investigations either supervised or unsupervised. There is co-operation for the Deputy. He raised the issue of me being in a spat. People are entitled to their opinion but the bottom line is the covert human intelligence system as we have it set up is as strong a system as we can have in place. There is no such thing as a perfect system and we will all subscribe to that view but there are difficult areas and we have provided all the procedural guidelines and the procedures to be followed in the context of that. I do not know where the culture of non-adherence is coming from. There will be situations from time to time where members of the force are contacted quickly about particular issues and they have to be dealt with. One would expect that would be the case but within all of this, there is independent judicial oversight. The Deputy is right to raise the seriousness of this because it is an issue for all of us. The importance of getting this right cannot be underestimated. We are trying hard to ensure with the procedures, policy and regulations we have in place that this will happen. It is not perfect but we have studied a few systems to arrive where we are now and we believe that, within reason, this is the appropriate system for handling informants and it is sufficiently robust to provide a level of reassurance both for our members and the people we are dealing with and their families that they can engage with us in confidence. That will form part of my report to the Minister. I am afraid that is where it is.