Ms Josephine Feehily:

I have asked myself that question on an ongoing basis. I do not think so. At the time, the Policing Authority was 15 months old. The relationship between the authority and the Garda has been a maturing one in the past couple of years. There was a certain lack of understanding that when the authority said it wanted something, it actually meant it. In fact, a senior person recently said to me that they are now realising that when we ask for something, we do not go away. We were asking for material. For perhaps 95 years, members of An Garda Síochána did not have the experience of being obliged to publically explain themselves in regard to minute details of management. I apologise for meandering.

I think that the professional tensions had not been resolved. The professional tensions that we saw were not just those between gardaí and the analyst service. That is an important point to make. We also saw professional tensions within the Garda service itself. As those tensions were not resolved, they gave us a submission that was certainly inadequate. It was about a half a dozen pages long and it came too late, at 8.30 p.m. the night before a public meeting. I cannot put myself in the minds of those concerned and know their intention but I would say that it was more that things were not resolved than it was a deliberate attempt to mislead.