Mr. Joseph Nugent:

Again, I did hear the piece but I do not know what specific piece of correspondence it was referring to. That is an aside. Garda ICT staff numbers have fallen very significantly. In many ways, that has led to an over-reliance on contracted resources to fill that gap. The risk has been mitigated to a very significant degree by that use of resources but we recognise that this is not the way we want to run the operation and that the mix as it stands is too heavily leveraged towards the contracted resources. For that reason, it is a source of some frustration that the process of getting approval for ICT staff has been quite cumbersome. There are complexities. In providing competitions for positions in ICT, we must provide for a mixed competition between Garda members and civilian members. The regularisation of the terms and conditions of appointment from that have resulted in a significant delay around that issue. Thankfully, the matter in general terms has been resolved within the last month. Mr. Kidd and I are meeting our HR colleagues this afternoon to progress the issue of running competitions for posts that are critically needed. Mr. Kidd might want to talk about it. In particular, the senior leadership ones have been such a critical-----