Mr. Noel Waters:

If I may, before the acting Garda Commissioner comes in, it is important to make the point that the criteria that were approved by the Government, and the Government was very conscious of this, were with regard to the Commissioner's statutory role in respect of the use of Garda resources. It was open to the Commissioner, very clearly, to decide that he - or she at the time - would use different criteria. These were not mandatory on the Commissioner of the day to use. It was entirely open to the Commissioner. If the Government wanted to go another way, it could have used the powers in the Garda Act to direct the Commissioner to do something. It did not go that way.