Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 20 June 2017

Public Accounts Committee

2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 20 - Garda Síochána - Internal Audit Report on Garda College, Templemore (Resumed)

9:00 am

Ms Nóirín O'Sullivan:

No. May I just finish my point? I want to be very clear that at all times we acted in absolute good faith and with propriety. The minute these matters were brought to our attention our focus was on doing two things. One was regularising the matters at the Garda College, to make sure the regularity was there and also, in terms of propriety, to make sure that the appropriate actions were taken, that we got full sight of what had been done and that we made sure that processes were in place to correct things that were wrong, to fix them and put new mechanisms in place to ensure they could never happen again. Our focus was also to make sure that we got a complete picture of the historical context, of who had done what and what had actually been actioned. What was very clear was that over the years this was a very complex matter. The record will show that what this executive did from the time we became aware of it in 2015 all the way through to the present day is unravel what is a very, very complex structure, try to regularise it, get appropriate advices, appropriate support and put regulatory and propriety practices in place that ensure this can never happen again.