Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The answer to that is the letter the Department received in June 2016 from John Twomey outlining that the Garda was concerned about some issues. No figure was mentioned, so I was not aware of the 14,700 cases. Neither do I believe was the Garda aware of it at that point because that was an earlier stage. The audit was not completed. Some procedures had been put in place by the Garda to ensure there would not be further problems. However, a national audit had not been done at that point, so it was unsure of the figures. It was only until the Garda had a press conference last week that a national audit was done which involved over well over 100,000. That got to a point where the figure of 14,700 was arrived at. The full national audit had not been done at that point. That is my understanding.

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