The Government still hopes to publish this week the report by a senior civil servant into why the Attorney General was not informed about the controversial Supreme Court statutory rape case, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said.
"The work is finished on the report, suggestions, recommendations and further issues to try to tighten up and follow the procedures. I promised I would do my best to have that report published before the House adjourns and I still hope I can do that. I appreciate the fact that people worked last weekend to do that. I hope to be able to publish the report before we break up on Thursday."
Mr Ahern said he did not think there was "anything sinister" involved.
"It was just that the procedures were not followed to the extent they should have been followed. We can have as many procedures as we like in place but human oversight in a procedure can happen. It is not that the person did not do their job; they did not do that element of their job. They got on with the job but did not inform the Attorney General."
He understood, he said, that quite a number of recommendations would be put forward to improve matters and examine measures.
"I am told there are 19 new measures to try to minimise the risk of recurrence of these issues, as well as other improvements, and the Attorney General has told me he will implement those immediately."
Replying to a series of questions, Mr Ahern said he understood about seven or eight procedures, by which the Attorney General was informed, should have been covered.
"In fact, there was only consultation on one of those, which was the nomination of counsel, and it did not happen after that. The person involved said that from day one and that is the reason I was able to tell the House on June 7th."
Mr Ahern said that there was a vast array of cases and people got careless about a system.
