Mr. Hugh Hume:

I might start on the question about protected disclosures. Prior to the new legislation coming in, GSOC was a nominated body and commissioners were prescribed persons under the legislation for workers within An Garda Síochána. Workers within An Garda Síochána could come to us and make protected disclosures. That has not, largely, changed with the new legislation. In practical terms, it is still the same.

We receive on average about 20 protected disclosures a year. Last year, we received 18, but it can vary from year to year. On 1 January of this year, we had 53 ongoing investigations arising from protected disclosures, and they relate to a broad range of matters from allegations of corruption or sexual impropriety to low-level theft and bad behaviour within the workplace. We have a dedicated protected disclosure unit that manages, on our behalf, all receipts of protected disclosure, protecting at all costs the identity of the person making the disclosure and carrying out investigations to a high standard and in a way that ensures the integrity of the process. As I said, that has been largely unchanged by the new Act. Whereas previously the Minister for Justice could send us a protected disclosure, that is now routed through the new protected disclosure commissioner rather than the Minister. Nevertheless, this is a resilient and active end of our business that produces a lot of investigations and much of the work we do.

On the staff questions, I will hand over to Mr. Whelan in a moment. We are still some way off our full complement. Mr. Justice MacCabe referred to the Grant Thornton review, which conducted international benchmarking of similar agencies to ours and looked at the comparable caseload and work carried by organisations. Our equivalent in England and Wales carries between two and five cases per investigator. We are a long way off that lower level of demand being placed on our investigators. I will let Mr. Whelan talk in detail about it, but we are significantly above that level. Based on the figures produced in the Grant Thornton report and our own internal assessment, as of today we are significantly under-resourced to benchmark against international best practice.