John Brassil (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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35. To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality if she will issue an apology to a person (details supplied). [30995/16]

Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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The incident involving the person to whom the Deputy refers took place in 1989 and has been the subject of correspondence with successive Ministers for Justice going back over a considerable period of time, including legal correspondence.

I am informed by the Garda Authorities that the incident in question was the subject of a thorough investigation at the time. The Deputy will appreciate that decisions in respect of prosecutions are a matter for the Director of Public Prosecutions who acts independently in accordance with the law.

Complaints were made by the person to whom the Deputy refers to the Garda Síochána Complaints Board which investigated the matters raised and found no evidence of an offence or breach of discipline on the part of the Garda members concerned.

This case was also among those reviewed as part of the Independent Review Mechanism set up by the Government in May 2014 to consider complaints of Garda misconduct referred to the Taoiseach and the Minister for Justice and Equality. An independent panel consisting of two senior and five junior counsel was established for that purpose. To ensure that the independence of the process was preserved, I also appointed a retired High Court Judge, Mr. Justice Roderick Murphy, to oversee the preparation of summaries and recommendations in the notification letters of the outcome of the process. His role was to independently vouch for the fact that the summaries of conclusions and the reasoning behind them were a fair reflection of the advice which has been made available to my Department by the Panel.

It was open to the independent counsel of the Independent Review Mechanism to make any recommendation that they saw fit. Having examined this case the recommendation was that there was no further action to be taken by me. The independent counsel's recommendation was accepted and the reasons for this conclusion were communicated to the person referred to by the Deputy in November 2015.