Mr. Justin Kelly:

The Deputy is right to mention workforce planning. To explain it simply, there is the front line and the divisional resources, and all the front-line gardaí out there. Then there are the specialist units such as, for example, the ones I described that I have responsibility for. If we are looking for people, the only place all the people we need to go into those specialist units can come from is from the front-line resources. There is always a balance to be drawn between specialist units, not just in my area but also with armed response units and all the various units we now have that heretofore we would not have had. They are all draws on front-line policing.

Again, the more people we put into my areas and all the different areas I have spoken about, the more crimes we can investigate. There is no limit. If someone said to me tomorrow I can put 500 more people into drugs and organised crime, I would not have 400 people twiddling their thumbs. We would just increase the number of arrests and prosecutions. It is the exact same for economic crime. Unfortunately, it is the exact same for crime against children and sexual crime. The more people we put into those specialist units the more we can do and the more we can investigate. Like I said, the Deputy is right it is a workforce planning issue. It is about balancing all that up with everything else members see going on. Members see demonstrations on the street. They see all that other front-line policing activity and the community policing everybody wants to see. We have just got to balance all that and that is done with our human resource management.

To answer the Deputy's question succinctly, I have sought all the resources I need for economic crime from our HR people. We have just completed a competition for extra detective sergeants for economic crime. Another competition for detective gardaí is about to start. There will be new resources coming in, with the detective sergeants quite soon and the detective gardaí to follow. Despite all I have said, there are additional resources moving into economic crime.