Dr. Ciaran Byrne:

As an accountant, I can say that value for money is a remarkably difficult concept to pin down in the context of public sector agencies. I will outline some quick figures. Our budget is €24.9 million of which about €19 million is pay. We knock out about €3 million to €5 million a year on other projects depending on what we are involved in. Bearing in mind the size of the agency and what we do, we are actually relatively light on budget. The big thing we spend our money on is vehicles. When we have our guys tooled up with a good vehicle, good PP equipment and some of the technology we mentioned such as spotting scopes, which are expensive, and so forth, we can do a fair chunk of our protection as well as our education and various other jobs.

Based on a socio-economic survey, every €1 spent on angling generates approximately €22, which is incredibly high. The reason for that is that when a guy goes fishing, he tends to go and stay. He needs petrol, lunch, bait and all the rest of it. In overall value for money terms I believe the agency is generating a pretty good return. It is a difficult concept. I will give a very quick example. Dr. Forde mentioned that this year we are looking to take about 13 km a net. In the last two years we took about 24 km each. Does that mean we are half as efficient this year as we were last year? The answer is "No". It means we may be even more efficient in terms of stopping more incidents or we may be a bit more efficient, but combined with environmental factors that change things. That is why it is a difficult concept to pin down. Overall for the budget of the agency and the size of it, I think we are delivering a reasonable amount.