Mr. Richard Cronin:

The Senator took the answer away from me, which was that we will always take more resources. I have a core team of about nine people. Like Dr. Ó Cadhla, many are marine science specialists who do scientific assessments, draft legislation and carry out negotiations for us. We also have people on our administrative side as well. That is just the core inside my team. We also have access to the National Parks and Wildlife Service team and its experts. They form part of our team. We have access to people in the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications, the Marine Institute and the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA. When we do our work at a European level and what we call the OSPAR level, which concerns the north-east Atlantic encompassing Iceland, Norway and the UK, we incorporate about 30 people into our team, so it is a team made up of those under my direct responsibility and the wider team as well.

How does this compare with comparable nations? The UK is probably not a very good comparison because it has overseas administrations, three or four different administrations in Great Britain and Northern Ireland and a very large population. If I look at similar administrations in the EU, we have a comparable sized team. I am thinking of countries like Portugal and Denmark. This does not mean that I or my colleagues in those countries think we have enough but we have similar sized teams, networks and arrangements.