Mr. Justin Kelly:

The Deputy has rightly identified some of them. When you step back and look at this, An Garda Síochána has always been the sole agency that interviewed people for prosecution and gathered evidence in cases. To move from that and to extend that to another agency such as Tusla is quite a big step and is not straightforward. The people who we usually have involved in these types of interviews and work are already experienced police officers. They are not coming in with one or two years' experience. They are not new probationers but rather experienced police officers who already have interviewed many times on the investigative end. They are then moved into this specialist area and get all the training that I described earlier. We are trying to merge that with another body with a group of people who have a whole different set of skills. While they have interviewed people, they have not interviewed them in that context and therefore, we are trying to marry those together. That is not as straightforward as it sounds.

The Deputy rightly mentioned the 24-hour nature of this. Sometimes, there are situations in which we have to interview during out of hours or when it is late or at the weekends and stuff like that. Again, the Deputy rightly mentioned the difficulties around that but as the committee has heard, Tusla is stepping up in this regard. It is making sure these people will be freed up for us so when we look for them, they will be there. It is really easy for us to say that we can get people 24 hours a day. We can do that easily but it is not easy for every other agency to say that. As I said earlier, Ms Duggan and I are absolutely determined that we are going to get this sorted. To have 30 people training together within a couple of months is positive. We just have to get those numbers and get to a stage where all the interviews are done like that.