Results 16,721-16,740 of 21,260 for speaker:Mary Lou McDonald

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 26: Collection of Motor Taxation
Vote 20: An Garda Síochána (16 May 2013)

Mary Lou McDonald: This is not about the names; rather, it is about the substance of the allegations.

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 26: Collection of Motor Taxation
Vote 20: An Garda Síochána (16 May 2013)

Mary Lou McDonald: I need Mr. Callinan to tell me whether the matter landed on his desk from the confidential recipient.

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 26: Collection of Motor Taxation
Vote 20: An Garda Síochána (16 May 2013)

Mary Lou McDonald: I understand the system.

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 26: Collection of Motor Taxation
Vote 20: An Garda Síochána (16 May 2013)

Mary Lou McDonald: Is Mr. Callinan saying that several different reports landed on his desk on the same issue?

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 26: Collection of Motor Taxation
Vote 20: An Garda Síochána (16 May 2013)

Mary Lou McDonald: Dealing with the issue of the quashing of penalty points?

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 26: Collection of Motor Taxation
Vote 20: An Garda Síochána (16 May 2013)

Mary Lou McDonald: Okay. I find this very tortuous-----

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 26: Collection of Motor Taxation
Vote 20: An Garda Síochána (16 May 2013)

Mary Lou McDonald: -----in terms of getting the information from Mr. Callinan. I am simply trying to establish whether the system worked for the two whistleblowers.

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 26: Collection of Motor Taxation
Vote 20: An Garda Síochána (16 May 2013)

Mary Lou McDonald: Maybe Mr. Callinan is telling me that several reports on the same issue landed on his desk and he cannot be sure from whom they emanated. Is that what he is saying?

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 26: Collection of Motor Taxation
Vote 20: An Garda Síochána (16 May 2013)

Mary Lou McDonald: The two gardaí were not alone in raising this substantive issue. Is that the case?

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 26: Collection of Motor Taxation
Vote 20: An Garda Síochána (16 May 2013)

Mary Lou McDonald: You know whether the issue landed on your desk.

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 26: Collection of Motor Taxation
Vote 20: An Garda Síochána (16 May 2013)

Mary Lou McDonald: Let us forget the assumptions. At any stage, did a report - never mind the names attached to it - land on Mr. Callinan's desk in respect of the quashing of penalty points from the confidential recipient?

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 26: Collection of Motor Taxation
Vote 20: An Garda Síochána (16 May 2013)

Mary Lou McDonald: We have established that the matter landed on Mr. Callinan's desk. It strikes me, then, as strange that it took a very public and unorthodox route for two of his officers to spark the investigation that happened. Perhaps Mr. Callinan can give an account of that.

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 26: Collection of Motor Taxation
Vote 20: An Garda Síochána (16 May 2013)

Mary Lou McDonald: Equally, if individuals step forward and go through these channels, they have to be absolutely assured that the system works, that there will be an appropriate response and that they will not be left in a situation in which they have made a disclosure confidentially but nothing has happened.

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 26: Collection of Motor Taxation
Vote 20: An Garda Síochána (16 May 2013)

Mary Lou McDonald: Does Mr. Callinan intend to review the procedures for confidential disclosures?

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 26: Collection of Motor Taxation
Vote 20: An Garda Síochána (16 May 2013)

Mary Lou McDonald: Can I suggest that Mr. Callinan look at that again? The system clearly did not work for the individuals concerned. They felt they made a disclosure, but that there was no action taken on foot of it. They were clearly frustrated into a position whereby they brought matters, through a different route, into the public domain. The response from management was an in-house investigation of the...

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 26: Collection of Motor Taxation
Vote 20: An Garda Síochána (16 May 2013)

Mary Lou McDonald: Earlier the Commissioner referred to December 2012.

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 26: Collection of Motor Taxation
Vote 20: An Garda Síochána (16 May 2013)

Mary Lou McDonald: Let me outline the difficulty I have with the way the Commissioner has portrayed the sequence of events. This is to leave aside the independence of the report, or even the outcome, because that has been fully ventilated. In Mr. Callinan's earlier contribution he painted a scenario in which a garda had been caught printing material that he says was being handed over to a Dáil Deputy in...

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 26: Collection of Motor Taxation
Vote 20: An Garda Síochána (16 May 2013)

Mary Lou McDonald: I understand why Mr. Callinan, as Garda Commissioner, would say that, but he is missing the fundamental point, namely, that although the matter was raised by the book and in an entirely appropriate manner within the structures of An Garda Síochána in March, nothing happened according to the two gardaí. There was no response. That is what triggered the public disclosure of the...

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 26: Collection of Motor Taxation
Vote 20: An Garda Síochána (16 May 2013)

Mary Lou McDonald: I am glad the Commissioner has made the distinction between confidential and anonymous disclosures.

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 26: Collection of Motor Taxation
Vote 20: An Garda Síochána (16 May 2013)

Mary Lou McDonald: In this instance, they were confidential but not anonymous. How does the Commissioner account for the fact that several months passed without anything being done? Arguably nothing would have been done and there would not have been any report on this issue but for the fact that two officers brought this matter into the public domain.