Mr. Art O'Leary:

Yes, these are full-time equivalents, permanent civil servants. We also have quite a sizeable budget in order to be able to contract in the expertise the Deputy spoke about because some of these skills are not generally available within the public service. We have to recognise that digital skills and people who work in areas outside of our normal working life is something we would have to contract in as specialist areas. An Coimisiún Toghcháin will do that as the need arises and as we get the powers themselves. In this organisation, we go where the work goes and are flexible enough. Our people in HR and accounts will all be in polling stations on 8 March with checklists looking at the way the election is being conducted.

In Mr. Carey's area, we will have electoral events over the next 20 months. There will be up to a dozen events perhaps, so we will all be very busy. We are happy we have sufficient resources to be able to do the job we have. I have been assured that where something arises, where we need to do more or give it an extra push, we will make a case for that as well.

After every electoral event, we will do a post-electoral event review to work out what went well and what did not go well. Our research programme, which will be very exciting this year, will look at a number of features of our electoral system and the electoral process which might lead us in a different direction. This is our starting point - 50 people. Who knows where we will be in a couple of years' time.

I mentioned individual fact-checking because it was part of our current campaign. That is only one part of this particular jigsaw. An Coimisiún Toghcháin has a huge role in monitoring, correcting, labelling and responding to any misinformation or disinformation it sees particularly around electoral process information. Such as, such and such a polling station has burned down or winning a prize if you write your name on a ballot paper. This kind of stuff is easily corrected. Media literacy is important here to explain to people about trusted sources of information but we also have a big job to do.

We have the collaboration of a number of stakeholders in this country as well. We have access to our colleagues in Coimisiún na Meán, the Data Protection Commission, the Department of housing and the Department of the Taoiseach. The job of all of these Department's is to support us in our job of dealing with misinformation or disinformation or any interference in the electoral process.

On the Deputy's wider question about networks, An Coimisiún Toghcháin is plugged into so many networks in the EU and further afield because this is a challenge, the solution to which will not be found in this country. It will be people, such as people in our organisation, talking to other election management bodies. We have a close relationship with the UK, Australia, Canada, with many other English-speaking countries and with all our EU networks. That works very well because everyone is learning. Every day is a school day and we get the benefit of that learning at many of these meetings and networks.

On the issue of regulatory powers, I have always said that our job is to work with social media companies in order to be able to manage the flow of misinformation and disinformation and it would be a sad day if I ever got to exercise any of the powers in Part 5 of the Act. If I have to go to the High Court to instruct a social media company to take down or remove a post or to take somebody from the platform, then we have lost.