Mr. Drew Harris:

I met senior CSO officials earlier this week. The Garda is the subject of a CSO report that shows improvements in data quality. Those improvements have been acknowledged by the CSO. The CSO, which is obviously entirely independent of the Garda, must be absolutely assured that we have made sufficient improvements and that those improvements have been built into systems and will last. It has been assured in those respects. I do not have a timescale for when we will achieve the point referred to by the Deputy. We have put our own systems in place. Certainly, there has been an improvement in data. The next thing we have to look to is clarity around our crime-counting rules. The CSO has pointed to that as well. We have appointed an interim chief data officer, who is an expert in the field, to assist us with what our strategic approach should be and what else we have to do with our systems to ensure the quality of the data. As I said, data is essential in modern policing. We have a focus on this. We want to get to a place where this qualification no longer exists. We are working towards that and the improvements have been acknowledged, but I do not think we are quite there yet.