Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail)
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Yes. We will have no more public meetings so we have to conclude. If there are issues on which we cannot conclude then we will just have to state that and consider them for further examination in part two of our report, which will be carried out after the summer recess.

Finally, we come to No. 663(i). This is from Mr. John Nugent, chief administrative officer, and concerns various questions we asked in public session. It is a short letter, less than a page, and I think we need to put it on the public record because it follows up on matters on the public record and directly replies to us. I am also informed that further information from Mr. Nugent arrived in this morning. This is currently being circulated. All of this will have to be taken into account before we finalise our report on An Garda Síochána. The information here is not extensive but there is some information that is relevant to what we have been discussing.

The first issue in this letter concerns Mr. Culhane and Mr. Howard and responds to Mr. Culhane's earlier correspondence about the draft internal audit interim report. The letter states that a recent meeting of the Committee for Public Accounts confirmed the Garda Commissioner initially sought legal advice over this serious matter and that Mr. Culhane was consequently invited to respond to Mr. Howard's correspondence. The letter then goes on to say that Mr. Culhane responded and confirmed that he has withdrawn the two letters to Mr. Kelly, the internal auditor, at the Committee of Public Accounts, including the comments he made about Mr. Kelly's professionalism, personal motives and integrity.

We need to verify the transcript. I know that I discussed this issue with Mr. Culhane and that he certainly did withdraw certain comments. I do not specifically recall him withdrawing those two letters before this committee, which is what this letter said he did. When the Commissioner was in here the second time I specifically asked her about the status of that letter, whether it still stood and whether it would still be standing by the time we came to producing our report. If that was the case, we would have to conclude that it reflected the official position of An Garda Síochána. Both she and Mr. Nugent said that the matter was going through a process. We now have a letter saying that it was withdrawn in public session several weeks earlier. This letter contradicts what we were told at the subsequent public meeting. We need to get this verified. It is possible that we missed the full withdrawal of the letter in public session. If we did then we would be happy to put that formally on the record but first we need that verified.