Ms Lois West:

I have to be honest and say yes, I was very concerned. Earlier I noted the dates on which we had tried to make contact. On the first two occasions it was an attempt to make contact by telephone. On the third occasion, on 30 June 2017, we wrote in quite some detail because we were very concerned about statements that had been made during the public meeting of the Policing Authority on 29 June 2017. When we wrote again on 19 July, it was in response to a letter we had received from the Policing Authority asking if it would be possible to share the letter with Garda colleagues to obtain their responses. Unfortunately, at the time we felt it would not be pertinent to do so as we were already facing certain adversity. The workplace has not been particularly pleasant for either of us for the past 15 months and at the time we felt it would be too inflammatory.