Mr. Peter Whelan:

To add to what Mr. Hume said, the Grant Thornton review undertook a comprehensive benchmarking exercise and provided us with a model on which we could base our figures, which was very helpful. At any one time in GSOC, we might have between 900 and 1,200 investigations ongoing and at different stages of the investigative process. At the moment, we have 30 investigators and ten assistant investigators, or 40 in total. If we have a minimum of 900 investigations and we want each person to carry ten cases, we are talking about a figure such as 90, which leaves the figure 40 a long way short of where we need to be. That adds to the stress and pressures that Mr. Justice MacCabe spoke about for everyone in the internal staff, who are not able to carry out very timely investigations but do comprehensive and thorough investigations and respect processes and all the legal procedures that need to be in place. We are finding that the investigations, although lengthy, are becoming more complex in nature and the volume is extremely high.