Mr. Michael Culhane:

When one is dealing with issues in An Garda Síochána, one should be able to have sufficient confidence with one's colleagues to be able to report these issues and to deal with them openly within the organisation. I do not believe it is necessary to prepare an independent report and then send it to oneself by registered mail. If there are issues in An Garda Síochána to be dealt with, they should be dealt with openly.

Not to go off on a tangent or anything like that, we had a tax audit in, I think, 2010, which resulted in An Garda Síochána having to pay penalties and charges of €12.7 million. I dealt with that issue. That was never a subject of a section 41 disclosure. It was dealt with in the normal course of events in terms of the management of the organisation. There are so many issues that come along on a daily basis or on a regular basis that one deals with them as best one can at the time.