URC officials' boss Tappe Henning insists referees are held to a very high standard and detailed how reviews of their performances are carried out.
The South African spoke to members of the media on Thursday, with the virtual press conference coming in the aftermath of the Mack Hansen affair.
The Connacht and Ireland wing was handed a six-week ban, reduced to three, following his outburst claiming on-going bias against his club.
In addition he is to undertake a match officiating course and the Connacht panel must receive media re-education about post-match media dealings.
Hansen’s comments came in a stunning post-match press conference following Connacht’s URC loss to Leinster last month.
The 26-year-old felt there were a number of incidents that were treated differently, saying, "it’s just getting to the point where it’s starting to really piss us off because we just feel we’re getting played out of games and we never ever get any calls."
The referee that evening, Chris Busby, was reported to be retiring, however, the URC yesterday confirmed that he remains available for selection for this season and is assistant referee at Leinster v Stormers on Saturday.
However, he has been replaced as assistant referee for the two Six Nations matches, France v Wales and Italy v France, he was due to officiate.
"The first thing to say is that referees are accountable," said Henning.
"They are accountable for their performances to the BKT URC.
"Every referee is reviewed during a match by a reviewer who makes notes of decisions that may not be accurate or decisions which were not made.
"After the game, on the Monday, the referee will join up with the reviewer and discuss the various incidents to get clarity around those decisions.
"It’s a process designed to make them accountable to URC and to identify flaws in their refereeing so we can assist them in terms of how can we correct those errors, how can we help and support them with advice about how they can do things differently to get a better outcome during the match.
"It’s an evidence-based system, with a 15-second video clip of every incident we talk about.
"If a referee has performed to a level of acceptability, they will continue with appointments.
"If they have shown they have difficulty to perform at this level, with two or three performances where they did not meet the expectations of what is acceptable or good and they have underperformed, there will be a period of remedial work.
"They will do some local games within their union and once their confidence and understanding of the areas they need to improve is visible, they will be given opportunity later in the competition."
"It takes a special person to be a referee. It is a difficult task.
"You will have a thicker skin than an elephant."
The URC selection panel which carries out the review process and picks officials for games is made up of four former international referees - Wales’ Nigel Owens, South Africa’s Stuart Berry, Ireland’s George Clancy and Scotland’s Neil Paterson.
On reaching the top level of refereeing, Henning (above) added: "We identify talented referees and put them into our development panel.
"We then introduce them to a suitable match, which we carefully select, to show if they are capable of dealing with a game at that level.
"It takes us five to seven years of URC exposure to build a referee to get them to Tier One.
"They will probably referee nine to ten games per season, which means their experience level reaches around 50 games and the more experienced they are the better they referee.
"As time goes on, we give our refs exposure to more difficult games to build them up to get them to a level.
"We have three levels of referee.
"We have our elite group of eight who have done 40 to 50 games in our competition and have been delivering consistently acceptable to good or very good performances over a period of five years.
"Then we have a middle group with 15-40 games. They will be in their second or third year in the URC.
"We carefully introduce them to more challenging games to build them up until they are good enough to take charge of any game at any time."
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