Ms Eimear Fisher:

Another aspect that needs to be considered is the mindset associated with the assignment of staff. With the SMI in early 2000, it was said it should only be by exception that a member should be assigned to an administrative position. That there is still a significant number of personnel being assigned to administrative positions must be addressed. The 1,211 positions identified are positions we identified ourselves. In addition, a large number of positions were identified by members and civilian staff within the organisation. The 259 are in addition to the 1,211. There are yet more. Even the victim offices that were set up recently have gardaí assigned to them. Therefore, there continues to be a mindset issue in the assignment of members to non-operational roles. This was identified as a critical issue in 2001. While there may be a process to be gone through regarding the reassignment of members to purely operational posts, the cultural mindset of always considering the assignment of a member to a post has to change.