New information, not police resources, is what's needed to progress the investigation into William Tyrrell's disappearance, the boy's inquest has been told.
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Five investigators are currently assigned to the case, down three from earlier in the year and from a peak of about 26.
NSW Detective Chief Inspector David Laidlaw said he didn't think a bigger reward for information was the option.
"The million-dollar reward, I think, was suitable and appropriate at the time and I still think it is," he said late on Wednesday.
"Resources, there's not an issue there at all. I won't shy away from that because the more people that work on it, the better off we will be to hopefully closing the matter.
"But we need that breakthrough of information, (it) is what we really need because to date we haven't found William."
He said police still haven't determined how the three-year-old boy went missing from his foster grandmother's home in Kendall on the NSW mid-north coast on September 12, 2014.
Despite police being called within the hour, hundreds of persons of interest being investigated and stacks of evidence documented, no trace of the boy or his Spider-Man suit he was wearing has been found.
At this stage, no resources other than information will help, Det Chief Insp Laidlaw said.
He scoffed at the suggestion that during a meeting with William's foster parents in 2019, he told them not to contact him and only go through a junior detective, Senior Sergeant Mark Dukes.
"You don't accept that?" the family's barrister, Justine Hopper, asked.
"No, I don't and I wouldn't," he replied.
Both sets of William Tyrrell's parents on Thursday are due to make family statements to the inquest.
Australian Associated Press
