Mr. Michael Howard:

Yes, 2015. Again, I want to be very careful because I am going to stick entirely to the facts as they were revealed to me. The normal business of audit is conducted in arrears, so in the routine, Niall Kelly would complete audit reports, they would be brought to the committee, they would be reviewed, we would approve them, we might question them and we would go on. Our role is to advise the Commissioner on matters of finance, audit, risk, governance and so forth. Obviously we address other things at meetings. There was a very busy agenda that day and at the end of the meeting this was raised verbally as an AOB item. There was no briefing given to us. I have reflected on how I will phrase this: neither I nor any of the other outside members of the committee took from that briefing any sense of the importance of this issue as it subsequently emerged. Ultimately, this issue was so serious that the Accounting Officer had to amend the statement of internal financial control. I do not believe that has happened before on the Garda Vote so, objectively speaking, this was a very serious issue. It was raised, we discussed it a bit and we were asked if we would include it in the 2016 programme of work, which was done - that was Mr. Kelly's report in its time - but no indication was given to us that this was different. I will again confine it to what was my impression and I will put this in these terms: I worked in the Civil Service for 35 years. I do not believe that I was a naïve or uninformed listener to that briefing.