Mr. Tony McMahon:

Yes. First, rewinding to the work on sexual violence and harassment, as a HR director, if I looked at the number of complaints and there were very few, I could assume we do not have a problem, but we know from our surveys that there is a problem. We need to look at where we will get information on the type of culture in our organisations that tells us where there is a problem and where there is not. The Minister may have mentioned the matter this morning, but that is why investment has been put into a report and support tool called Speak Out. In the past, the only gateway to raising concerns or complaints was through formal complaints processes, which we know are adversarial, and we know that incidences are under-reported. We now have a report and support tool that will give us information on the types of issues arising in our organisations. As for a barometer on that, because this is new, it is difficult to say what kind of number represents progress or otherwise, but at least we will get a benchmark. That is being piloted. It was introduced only in September or October across our institutions. That will give us an insight into the types of issues arising.

The second type of metrics we might look at is in the area of training. Dr. Brennan's submission mentions this. We put in an application through the HEA for funding to support the work on consent. The IUA's estimate was that to fully embed this work would involve an investment of between €350,000 and €400,000 per annum. That is a lot in terms of people to work on training, counselling services, investigations across the whole remit from report, support and prevent to dealing with issues when they arise in terms of counselling and the actual investigative process to deal with issues. There is a huge range of issues there. Training is significant and will be one of the issues.

The third barometer will be the culture surveys and the types of data we have taken already through the national surveys, repeating those to see what the picture is and to see what sort of improvements we will make. It is very firmly on our agenda. We have a very specific framework. Every institution has an implementation plan to deliver the framework. That is where we are at today.