Ingram states that the FRU had access to a "massive budget" and "freedom to operate outside the structures which report directly to the RUC." The FRU is thought to have over one hundred agents in place within paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland, agents which have been in place for over twenty years. The Force Research Unit has been implicated in the murder of at least four civilian Roman Catholics, the killing of a number of Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) members, and the killing of two senior loyalist paramilitaries.