Ms Josephine Feehily:

Yes. The Minister for Finance. That is not to say that there was not work done at an official level, particularly around the time of the Finance Bill, budgets and so on.

The upshot of that is there is a huge support structure for that function in the Department of Justice and Equality. It is because of that it is critically conflicted, which was stated in our submission, in terms of where it fits vis-à-visalso being responsible for the oversight bodies. The Department is one of the oversight bodies but it duplicates the work of lots of the other oversight bodies. Where is the Minister? The Minister, certainly, but the Government always, have a place in terms of strategy, policy and direction, and must have an exceptional power of direction, without question. It is the level of granularity that is exercised and runs in parallel with what we are supposed to be doing that creates gaps. We are also concerned about the potential for a gap in oversight because the Minister is the only place that owns both security and policing. What is in the middle? If there is architecture that looks at security and another that looks at policing then how does one manage that intersection safely? How do we know what the Minister knows and, conversely, how does the Minister know what we might have seen in our oversight? It is not that I see no role. I absolutely respect that there will always be a role, and has to be a role for Government, in policing - it is a political act. It is about the day-to-day operational management and we believe that should be as much reduced as possible.