Ms Justice Mary Ellen Ring:

Every organisation has front-line personnel and support staff and each is as important as the other. When we made our business case, we were conscious of the need not to end up with too many people doing particular work and not having enough support or administrative staff in the organisation. Increasing the number of personnel puts a strain on the HR department. We have to have regard to the effect increases in staff numbers have on the organisational structure. The other element was that we were working within a financial framework and we had to have regard to how many persons we could hire within that framework. Had we had an unlimited framework, we certainly would have sought more investigators and support staff but we were conscious of the financial realities and taking those realities we constructed a case that fit financially and met our needs. To answer the question as to whether we would like more, yes we would.