Ms Éimear Fisher:

The situation here is that the three organisations, GSOC, the Policing Authority and the Garda Inspectorate, are clear on each of our individual roles. When the Policing Authority was being set up, there was some discussion in relation to our role, etc. We do not believe that there is any difficulty in relation to clarity of role and in relation to overlap or gap existing because we have regular communication with them. We have never had a difficulty in relation to resources and I would think that anyone looking at the work that we have done in the reports to date would say that we have used resources quite well, with only nine support staff and three inspectors. There is no difficulty as far as we are concerned in relation to the effective use of our resources.

In regard to the other bodies, their functions are quite discrete and quite clear. I am not sure what would be gained by putting the three of them together. We have quite distinct roles.