Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

That is fair enough. I will come back to it. It is a separate issue but it is relevant, as I said, because what has been exposed in the breath testing story is that it took three years to collect information. When we did, we found the level of activity was half what it really was. That has exposed a real problem within the Garda.

With regard to the senior positions, the Commissioner said it took her a long time to set up her executive team. In a critical reform area, where we are spending an additional 5% in pay, or whatever was in the pay agreement, and putting in 800 gardaí, we do not even have the executive team in place, according to the Commissioner, to work out what is happening within the force. We had such an experience here. Going through the same process, it took us six months to get a senior adviser for our budgetary advisory office. To my mind, that was unnecessarily long. We agreed the process a year ago on the back of an OECD recommendation. It took four or five months to proceed to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, in November. There was then a four- or five-month row over whether the officer would be an assistant secretary or principal officer. Therefore, we find ourselves putting in the advertisement a year after discussing the matter at the Dáil reform committee. It will be a year and a half by the time the person is appointed. This committee will not be able to do its work as effectively because of the nature of our budgetary process, which starts now and runs to October. We will start kicking only in October. The Garda would seem to have had the same experience, according to Deputy Commissioner Twomey and Commissioner O'Sullivan. Are we happy that the process of senior-level appointments is taking a year and a half?