Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It would be good if Mr. Bowes could provide the committee with some of the numbers around that because we could include that in our report, that is, how many people have been removed on that basis.

On the second point about those who were removed for permanently leaving the State, and there is a lot of debate around this, I certainly believe that many ordinary people would feel that it would have been quite reasonable that anyone permanently leaving the State should have had his or her payment terminated. The question is how we investigate that. I agree that there are media reports and people's stories which have emerged in the media which seem to be breaches of the data regulations, yet it is not clear how that happened. If the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection, as it was then, carried out operations which were not in line with the Act, then that was wrong. How do the organisations propose that we monitor that investigation as things go forward?