Mr. Tom O'Mahony:

Our first involvement was in August 2012, which was somewhat earlier than the RSA's involvement. Sergeant McCabe came to the Department with the dossier of information. My colleague, Mr. Treacy, met him and at a later stage, though I am not sure when, Sergeant McCabe also met the Minister. When the information was provided to us it was clearly of great concern. However, the problem for us was that the information - as everyone now knows since the information is in the public domain and has been the subject of various reports - was in essence on the manner in which gardaí were or were not enforcing the legislation. Of course, we formulate the legislation but it is for gardaí to enforce it. The Department of Justice and Equality oversees that. As with other Departments, we have a member of staff from the Office of the Attorney General assigned to us. We consulted with her and took legal advice on what we should do. The advice was that we should give the information to the Department of Justice and Equality. We did that in September 2012. There was subsequently correspondence between our Minister and the Minister for Justice and Equality also. That was really the only route we could go with the information as gardaí do not have any direct line of accountability to us.