Ms Karen O'Leary:

I shall answer the first 60% of the Senator's question. We have 90 staff and an approved head count of approximately 106. We are actively recruiting. Many vacancies arose from the moratorium on recruitment and the reduction in numbers. We are not enormous, but we are not tiny.

We have a broad mandate. We mentioned competition law and consumer law enforcement. We have four strategic goals. Enforcement is our top priority because sometimes we are the only enforcer of certain legislation. Regarding advocacy, we have a role in promoting competition and consumer protection. We provide information and education to consumers on their rights and personal finances. Our fourth goal concerns our development as an organisation and being a good public sector organisation.

I will cite a couple of roles we perform that might be of interest. Regarding the car sector, which the Senator mentioned, we have a product safety role as well as a role in helping consumers to make decisions when buying cars, which combines the personal finance aspect with ensuring consumers' rights are protected.

I am in charge of the criminal enforcement division. One of the areas in which we are active is prosecuting where we find clocking or crashed cars being sold to consumers by businesses. This is not indirectly related to the costs of accidents and so on.

In our product safety role, we are the Irish point of contact for European-wide product safety for consumers. We are active in that sector. It intersects with cars, including the selling of crashed cars.

We have a broad mandate. We also regulate certain aspects of supplier and grocery retailer regulatory obligations. We have a role in alternative dispute resolution. Our functions are very broad, but the core work is enforcing competition law and consumer protection law.