Ms Helen Hall:

There are two aspects to this. As I understand this, and I will not comment on another agency, but the CEA will be about corporate crime and company law. It has Garda members on secondment to the authority but they work under the director of corporate enforcement. I understand that the interaction mentioned is about getting sufficient Garda members and having them there, which is one piece of this issue.

There are also the areas, which are directly under our oversight, of serious crime, fraud, economic crime and cyber crime. There is also the review carried out by Mr. Justice Hamilton, which is something that we are also overseeing. I will go back to something that I said a little earlier, which is this is very much a case in point of having the right technical and professional resources at the disposal of the Garda Commissioner. One might actually want forensic accountants rather than gardaí in uniform for something like that, or, again, to go back to those ICT specialists. That sort of crime is quite complex. There will be a pass-over between the CEA and something that then comes into An Garda Síochána, but there is a line for that there, which is the economic crime, the fraud, and the elder abuse which the committee has discussed earlier is financial crime and is directly within the remit of An Garda Síochána. It has its own resources. Is there enough of these? The answer from the Hamilton review is "No, not yet", and that is something that there has to be a plan for. Part of the workforce planning is getting the right skills in there to support both investigation and prosecution.

Is that helpful?