Ms Emily Logan:

We started our project in relation to the transition in July 2021. Internally, across teams we have 18 in the core steering group. Externally, we are involved in two things. The first is a programme board, which is a strategic national board with all the oversight bodies and the Garda. That is run by the Department of Justice. Following from that is an implementation group. Internally, we engage in two key workstreams. The first is called the new model and is about having a voted account. We have not had a CEO in GSOC before so we will have a CEO who is the Accounting Officer from 1 July. Much of the work around that is preparing for having a voted account and being able to do that from 1 July. We recently reported to the Department of Justice and described ourselves as vote-ready. We have engaged and Ms Amanda McLoughlin, our head of finance, has been engaging since 2022 with financial shared services and the National Shared Services Office on setting up the environment. That is ready to be tested. We are at a stage where we are looking for small things like numbers from Revenue, and numbers from Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform once we know the Act will commence and we have confirmation of that. Internally, it is around processes. It refers to the kind of things that Mr. Peter Whelan, our director of investigations, spoke about. There are multiple new procedures and processes that need to take place. We have 31 new procedures. We are taking the opportunity to enhance and improve what we do, so some are improved processes. The others are completely new, where there is a new provision in the Bill that we have to set up a new procedure for. Much work is centred on that.

The other important thing, aside from the number of staff, is capability and skill sets. Mr. Whelan referred to child specialist interviewing, which is one of the most recent ones. We are trying to maximise our independence. While we are independent institutionally, we have to be able to function without the gardaí and without depending on external agencies.