Mr. Ian Drennan:

I thank Deputy Chambers for her questions. The first is on what the information is. The first letter I received from the committee in the days following the direction to acquit the accused set out in pretty strident terms what it wanted to discuss. It was perfectly understandable at the time. My concern at that time was that the Parliament has a statutory duty to hold the ODCE to account. As I hope has been abundantly clear from the correspondence issued by the ODCE to the committee, our duty to account to the Parliament is one I take very seriously. In more recent correspondence, there was a specific reference to the question of whether I had views on whether the trial judge's final ruling was a comprehensive analysis of the issues within the ODCE and so on. As I said in the correspondence in reply, the trial judge's final ruling was in respect of two defence applications. The Deputy is a barrister so she will understand that. The ruling was in relation to two defence applications; it was not a full account of the whole investigation of the whole trial. It was not a full critique. Therefore, by definition, that ruling could never provide a full understanding of all the issues that arose before it was made. Given the particular issues and themes that arose in the ruling, including coaching, contamination and cross-contamination, it seems that in order to form a view as to whether this legislation meets the requirements in terms of where it came from and so on, one needs to understand what went wrong. If one wants to understand what went wrong, one must realise that one trial judge ruling that deals with very specific issues arising over any amount of newspaper coverage or whatever will not give one an understanding at the level needed. That can really only be gained by reference to the underlying documents. Clearly, it is not a comprehensive account, nor is it an investigation. I have made that clear before. Rather, it was a matter of pulling together the more salient documents and other pieces of information, correspondence and communications so members could look at the matter in the round and say they understood what happened, what went wrong, what ultimately led the trial judge to rule in a particular way, and the basis for the defence counsel mounting certain arguments and so on. That specifically relates to the coaching, contamination, cross-contamination, investigative bias and the failure to investigate issues because they are all tied up in the one package. I refer to the two EY witnesses.

The trial judge made reference to the issue of disclosure. The document I had prepared for the committee elaborates on this and where there may have been difficulties in order to give it a better understanding of why the judge might have taken a particular view on disclosure and the deficiency, or otherwise, thereof. The other issue is the destruction of documents, which is in a completely different category. That is the nature of the information. It is to give committee members a fuller understanding of how these issues arose and, in essence, what went wrong.

The Deputy's second question was whether there is anything in the document that, in my assessment, prejudices my functions. In a letter at some time around December 2017 — I cannot remember the exact date — I corresponded with the committee. At that point, I set out the basis on which I had formed the view that it was lawful to give the committee the information because it was information in my possession. I have a statutory duty to be accountable to the committee, as a committee of the Oireachtas. Deputy Kelleher said there is a provision in section 955 that, in effect, means I can avail of an exemption whereby I do not have to provide the committee with certain information if, in my view, it would be prejudicial to discharging my functions. That would be under normal circumstances. What I said in the letter was that these are clearly not normal circumstances. Therefore, it would do a disservice to the ODCE to have the committee trying to assess our performance without being in possession of the requisite information. It does the committee a disservice and certainly does us a disservice. I hope the members accept our bona fides regarding how seriously we take our obligations to be accountable to the committee and put the members in a position in which they can understand what went wrong and make an assessment of our organisation and the legislation they are currently charged with scrutinising.

The third question was on why we need the information. I hope I have answered that at this point.