Mr. Philip Carroll:

Deputy Ferris also asked about the level of co-operation with the North. We co-operate with the North through the Garda with the PSNI, where there is co-responsibility for investigations that are being conducted. We also co-operate with the Food Standards Agency, FSA, in Northern Ireland and with the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development in Northern Ireland. This co-operation is ongoing and is a two-way process.

Deputy Pringle asked about governance in the protection of people's rights. People have the same rights and those rights should be protected. I am not aware of circumstances in which they have not been, but again, if that is the case, we must understand that.

I am at pains to emphasise that the steering group does stand separate from the investigation committee which it controls.

In the terms of the governance, I will briefly explain the process. Somebody in the Department at head of division or assistant secretary level indicates to me or the steering group that he or she believes there is a justification for conducting an investigation into some matter or other. The investigation steering group considers that, how it should be done, whether it should be done, if we should allocate resources to the investigation, the nature of the investigation and why it warrants a separate investigation. It then decides who does it and the timeframe within which it should be done. There will always be a condition about reporting back and keeping the investigation steering group up-to-date on that.

Since September, in many of the cases we have determined that there is no reason the investigations division should conduct any investigation. We might have believed they should be done as part of the normal inspection process in the Department, and those decisions have been made. In other cases we have agreed to the investigations committee working in co-operation with the Garda, and not necessarily leading on those. In another case we have agreed that it should work in co-operation with the Revenue Commissioners. There is a widespread amount of co-operation across the system, including with EHOs, which one Deputy mentioned, and the FSAI. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine's investigations division does not stand alone. It usually works in co-operation with many other agencies.

On prosecutions, I was asked about success rates. In the past five years, we have had 66 cases for prosecution and so far 44 of those cases were disposed of in the courts. The success rate was 40, or 90%. The remaining cases are still in the court system; I understand there are 21 or 22 cases.

I answered Deputy Penrose's question on refusal. There was no refusal to release the particular report he referenced. Our hope is that the report will be released soon, but it is out of our control. I hope I have explained the procedure. The Deputy asked me how it worked, and I am happy to come back to that if he wishes. We do not throw people's rights out the window. We comply with our legal obligations, as we are required to do.

I do not know whether Deputy Deering suggested that we put a proper name in place to mask continued practice, but we have changed the name. We want to position it within a structure of the Department because the SIU was a unit, as the Chairman mentioned, within a wider division. It is now a division on its own. There is no other function attached to the division. It is solely the investigations division, headed by a senior superintendent veterinary inspector.

Deputy Deering referred to the SIU having a function in regard to a determination on single payments. I presume by that he means allowances. That has been the case where cross-compliance inspections may have been referred in particular circumstances. It is unique but that would happen. That is an EU requirement; there is no getting away from that. We are under that obligation.

Deputy Barry talked more generally about inspections than investigations. I did not come equipped to explain the intricacies of inspections in regard to SPS.

Again, our inspections are governed by EU regulations. There are obligations to the effect that we have to establish that where there is a risk to EU funds we ensure that we remove it, and in some cases people have compliance issues around the single payment, as the Deputy is aware. Typically, they do not go to the investigation group. On occasion they do, but it happens very rarely.