Mr. Hugh Hume:

But it is determining if they are vexatious. For frivolous, we will rule inadmissible if they are frivolous or vexatious. Frivolous would be something like they complained about a garda who has dirty boots - something low level that we would not take care of.

Vexatious is where there is some degree of malice behind it. If we assess that there is a degree of intent to cause the garda harm or it is not genuine, we can exclude a complaint because it is vexatious. We can do that at the admissibility stage or we can do that when we gather a bit more evidence, and we do that. By and large, the greatest reason we close complaints is in that stage where we have done an assessment and we find there is no case to answer.

In terms of the individual, clearly, if we were to identify that, beyond just malign, there was an actual lie to GSOC, we have power under the Act to take criminal prosecutions or to conduct a criminal investigation into that. Since we have been formed, we have done that on 12 different occasions. Six of them are related to Garda members and six of them are related to members of the public who, we believe, were untruthful with us.