David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Twelve. On page 6 of the briefing note that Ms Higgins provided, there is table 1 and I ask if it could be put up on screen. I want to raise an issue that is important in terms of doing a look back exercise which, unfortunately for us, is all that we can do. It has been acknowledged that the level of the service for survivors was poor and appalling in the past and, for them, this adds insult to injury. We need to make sure that mistakes are not made in the future in terms of any organisation. There is a pattern here when we see what is revealed by a look back exercise. From table 1 we can see that the audited accounts for 2014 show that the cost of salaries and wages was €791,000, that figure increased to €1.3 million in 2015 and to €1.492 million in 2016 and it is now at its highest in 2016. When we note the volume of work which is set out underneath, it shows there was much more activity going on in 2015 than there was in 2016. At a time when the number of people applying for the service, the number of applications to be processed, the number of telephone calls received and so on are reducing, staffing costs have increased. It strikes me that we have gone the wrong away around on this. At a time when staff were needed, we did not have them and now when the service is starting to be scaled down, the cost of staff salaries is at its highest. Can Ms Higgins see that problem in the first instance?