Ms Josephine Feehily:

I will turn it the other way around. We have a policy in place on how we engage as an oversight body with the characteristics of a regulator. We have to engage in a structured way, for good order, with the body we are overseeing because we have to be able to hold it to account for the material that comes into us and for the quality of that engagement. Formal liaison structures are in place and we observe the principle of transparency. Visits made by members and meetings at which we ask for documents are all funnelled through a liaison officer so that there is full line of sight on that engagement within the Garda. We learned at an early stage that we cannot hold the Commissioner or the senior team to account for material that does not come formally to us as such material does not have any status. We have made it clear to the Commissioner that people who attend the authority have to have the power to commit the organisation and the people we meet have to speak for An Garda Síochána, rather than themselves. We are an overseer and not a complaints body, and that is a really important distinction. We get a lot of contacts from individual gardaí, serving and retired, and the vast majority of what they want to tell us is appropriate to the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission, GSOC. The statutory plan is to refer them to GSOC and if other people want to talk to us about something that is not a GSOC matter, they have to come as part of a Garda delegation.