Ms Antoinette Cunningham:

We have to go back to the principles of natural justice and fair procedure. A member of the public is entitled to natural justice and fair procedure. If he or she is being interviewed for a criminal matter, that person will be spoken to. However, before that person is asked any questions or has to supply any answers, he or she is given a legal caution.

What is happening here is GSOC has categorised something as a formal investigation without specifying whether it is criminal or disciplinary. It has then added a section that says a garda have to account to a member in the course of his or her duty. In accounting under that formal investigation, that garda's rights could effectively be denied to him or her, because if he or she is not aware it is a criminal investigation and the caution has not been administered, then information gathered, information the garda may have volunteered, could subsequently be used against him or her in a criminal investigation. That is wrong. We are saying that instead of formal investigation, it should specify whether it is criminal or disciplinary and the appropriate powers should be used accordingly. That is the point we are making. There is an absence of natural justice and fairness here.