Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

I take that point. I was going to say in my initial reply that I would like a specific question put down on that matter in the interests of accuracy so that we could put on the record of the House the exact circumstances that arose in the case of the specific instance referred to. I recall that issue but I do not have exact recall of the circumstances of it. I recall in general terms the point made by the Deputy.

I will make two points. Sometimes a decision arises out of a court case which may be quite surprising and has not been predicted and which requires an immediate move by the Oireachtas to close any lacuna or loophole that is identified and which could have a wider policy implication by way of third party judicial review or ex parte application by others in similar circumstances, which was precisely the issue that arose in the CC case when other people who saw themselves as in similar positions as to the state of their detention were taking on the legal opportunity of seeing if they could fit through the precedent set in the CC case.

The question refers to the recommendations made in a report conducted by the then Secretary General of the public service management and development division and whether those have been implemented. My information is that they have been implemented. The report found that the reason the Attorney General was not notified or consulted on the remaining milestones as to how that case was progressing — this was regarded as an important and sensitive case — arose as a result of administrative error. It should be noted that the report also stated that no perfect system could be designed to deal with such administrative errors but Mr. Sullivan was satisfied that the initiatives under way, the new measures which were being proposed and the recommendations arising from the review, would further enhance the operations of the Attorney General's office and reduce the risk of such an event recurring. It does not eliminate the possibility of risk since human error, administrative error, cannot be excised no matter how robust a system is devised but a system could be devised to reduce the risk to the greatest extent possible.

I cannot recall with certainty that the issue the Deputy has raised now arose in the same set of circumstances as the one that gave rise to the report in the first place. I will ask the Attorney General's office to give me a note on the circumstances of that occurrence and Deputy Gilmore can in the correspondence decide whether that point stands up.

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