Former Scottish FA referee Hugh Dallas insists there has been 'very little issue' with VAR in Scottish football - but did concede that Celtic have been on the receiving end of incorrect calls this season.

Dallas officiated at World Cups and was at the centre of several controversies during his career in Scotland including the infamous 1999 Celtic v Rangers tile-decider in which he was struck by a coin thrown from the crowd.

He was formerly the SFA's head of referee development before being sacked in 2010 after an internal investigation into an alleged 'tasteless' email containing an image forwarded from his account on the day of Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Scotland. The situation was later set to go to an employment tribunal before both parties reached an agreement in 2011.

The 65-year-old had previously been embroiled in another SFA investigation after an assistant referee, Steven Craven, resigned as a result of the fallout from former official Dougie McDonald's decision to overturn his own penalty award to Celtic against Dundee United in 2009.

Now a UEFA referee officer, Dallas appeared as a guest on BBC Sportsound ahead of Saturday's SPFL Premiership fixtures where he discussed the introduction of VAR in Scottish football.

During the course of the debate he conceded that, while the technology itself has largely worked as required, officials' interpretation had caused much of the resultant discourse and that Celtic had been the victims of incorrect calls on that front.

He said: "They've brought it in very quickly. If you look at the Premier League in England, they ran it offline for two years before they introduced it whereas Scotland was very quick to get it up and running in October.

"But we've had very little issue with the actual VAR. The issue seems to have been with the interpretation of the laws of the game.

"Handball is really, really difficult. One referee will see it one way and of course it's up to the way the referees are educated. It's very difficult to get a room that will all agree on a controversial decision.

"You'll split everything easily - whether the arm is out, if it's too far out, has it made the body bigger or is the arm above the shoulder, is it a natural position for that action? All these things have to be taken into consideration before the referee on the field can make the split-second decision."

READ MORE: Reason for Aaron Mooy's Celtic absence revealed

When pushed by host Kenny Macintyre that there have still been too many 'poor decisions' - citing the Michael Smith unpunished handball against Celtic, the Efe Ambrose spot-kick call at Parkhead and Matt O'Riley's conceded penalty against Hearts - Dallas said: "I can accept the examples you've given there, I think the football world probably saw them the same way.

"The arm was out for a handball which was reviewed - but this is the early stages of VAR. Referees are still finding their feet with it. It won't solve all the issues because referees will have different opinions on what they see and what you see."

Amid a lengthy conversation, the panel touched on what constitutes a 'clear and obvious error' and at which point video assistant referees should get involved while Dallas was also asked if he thought there was too much hysteria surrounding the technology from pundits.

"I'll speak about the handball incident on the very first day of the season [the first day of VAR, when Smith handballed vs Celtic]," replied Dallas, whose son Andrew is a current SFA official. "Everybody accepted it should've been a penalty, the VAR saw it differently.

"But for me the criteria of 'arm out from the body, making the body bigger' and it definitely wasn't in a natural position. If you study it very carefully you can actually see the player dips down and his left arm actually moves out.

"That is quite clear in the guidelines that if the arm is out from the body and it makes the frame of the body bigger it should be punished."

Dallas added: "I think if it happened now it would be called differently."