Mr. John Twomey:

The operational element of it involved the armed support unit in the Dublin Metropolitan Region, DMR. At that particular time, the unit was based in each of the Garda regions outside of the DMR but, in response to the feud, we had to temporarily transfer people up from the country and into the city while we engaged in a process of recruiting, training and establishing a unit in the DMR. That has since been established and there is now a permanent armed support unit in the DMR. The feud was an emerging issue at that time and we took the decision to respond immediately. That meant redeploying resources into the DMR on a temporary basis and this led to increased operational demand. In addition, we had only begun the process of backfilling our national units and there was a shortage of staff in particular areas. We had to supplement those staff because they were the ones who were actually investigating these serious crimes. We also put additional resources into our drugs and organised crime bureau in the form of a special crime task force. This also resulted in the need to temporarily transfer people from other areas. They were the main operational issues that contributed to the spike in that year.