Ms Paula Hilman:

I understand what Alan Todd, PSNI assistant chief constable, would have outlined. It was very much in response to the 24-7 uniformed police response to calls. By the time one comes into the arena of public protection, we are starting to work in the more specialist and higher level of offending. Undoubtedly, public protection is a growth area for the PSNI. The chief constable has said that. It is an area in which we have put more resources. We will continue to review both that and cybercrime. While the PSNI is reducing other areas of policing, increased resources are going into public protection, cybersecurity, critical neighbourhoods and well-being. Across all areas of public protection, such as management of sex offenders, child abuse, and social services, we have strong partner relationships and joint protocols. The nature of the work we are doing allows those partnerships to work well.

With the exception of our rape crime unit, we do get the volume of calls our uniformed colleagues get. Our partnership relationships and practices are good. They are mature, especially the child abuse ones and adult safeguarding. We are now moving into the latter arena and have joint protocols with that.

Our detectives get additional training in the area of work they are in such as child abuse, adult safeguarding and managing sex offenders. There is also a well-being strategy and how we look after our people. What they are exposed to, such as images and so forth, many other people will, fortunately, never be exposed to in their lifetimes. Our well-being strategy is above the PSNI strategy and how we support them to do that work. It is both the training, environment and their well-being, as well as working with partners in a collective approach to that.