Mr. Martin Callinan:

I thank Deputy Ross. It is the case that the allegations that were sent to me by the Department were anonymous. We did not know who had made them. That remained the position right up until some time in December, several weeks after the investigation had commenced.

An incident arose in the Cavan-Monaghan division whereby one of those who were involved in this was in the station and was confronted by a sergeant. This man was printing PULSE documents off the computer and he was asked what he was doing. He indicated that he was printing information off the PULSE system to hand over to a political representative. He was confronted on that and told he should not be doing it. A discussion took place and it would not be appropriate to go into that. Resulting from that, he indicated that he and another person were providing information to a politician with regard to the penalty points system. The result of that was that I took advice, from both the Data Protection Commissioner and the Attorney General's office, and I issued a direction. That is well publicised. Unfortunately - but there you go - all of this has been out in the public domain. I was somehow or other perceived as having put a gagging order on these persons. In among the directions I sent down to the local command was one to ask these persons, if they had any information at all, that they provide that information to Assistant Commissioner John O'Mahoney, who was then investigating these allegations that are in the public domain, and, in addition, if they had any documents that they had obtained from the Garda PULSE system, that they hand them over. They should not have those documents in their possession. That is when we became aware of those persons, and those are the facts of the situation. We did not become aware when these allegations manifested themselves in the first instance.

Nothing of a criminal nature, as we now know, has been found by the assistant commissioner or his team. Therefore, there was no need to approach the Director of Public Prosecutions for a view or a direction on this matter. Had that been the case, the examination may have taken a different direction and there might then have been a necessity to go elsewhere.

It is very clear from the report - this is an important point of which sight should not be lost - that the persons who were making those allegations did not have all of the information available to them, and one will have seen evidence of that throughout the report - for instance, where allegations were made about those involved in fatal traffic accidents. All of that is laid bare in the report. There are many inaccuracies.

The other point Deputy Ross raised was the issue of discretion. We have spoken about this ad nauseam. One either accepts or does not accept that An Garda Síochána is entitled to have discretion. In certain cases, the Director of Public Prosecutions, who has delegated his functions to An Garda Síochána in relation to certain summary matters and is happy to do that, provides for a level of discretion. As I stated earlier, how that discretion is used is key to all of this. People will have a view as to whether that is a proper space to be in, but that is the reality. My personal view is that I am a strong supporter of discretion. It is a good thing to have in place, provided it is used correctly. Without going over old ground, trying to be descriptive or prescriptive in terms of anything I can put out there to help my members towards that end is difficult beyond issuing guidelines that talk about first principles, non-discrimination, equality and practical application in dealing with a particular circumstance. I think we would all have to agree that if a person is bringing a sick child to hospital or the tax on a car is out by a month in the case of a person who is unemployed or has lost his business, and for whom matters are absolutely going the wrong way, or whatever the situation is that confronts my members on the ground, they should have the power to deal with these matters in a humane way that is balanced and fair. I am certainly not saying, where there are matters of such a serious nature that action is required to be taken, that we should pull back from doing our job and let others decide. Where there are less serious offences of a summary nature coming to our attention, it is very important that the discretionary facility, based entirely on the circumstances of the case and with those principles that I have mentioned in play, continues in the future. It has served the citizens of our country very well in the past. With the proper use of that discretion, it will continue to be of service to the community.