Dr. Patrick Prendergast:

I thank the Deputy for his questions. It is not exactly accurate to describe it in the way he has. When we met the HEA on 16 June 2010, we told it that we had these 27 staff who had been involved in the process for a year and a half and that we wanted to proceed with the promotions at the expiry of the employment control framework, which was due to expire at the end of that year - in other words, December 2010. The HEA's view was it was not unreasonable to proceed with the promotions on 1 January 2011, as there was no employment control framework in place at the time. We had to make the decision and communicated with the staff members whom we were going to promote at the expiry of the employment control framework. It turned out subsequently - I suppose nobody, neither the HEA nor any others, was to know this - that, after we had made the decision and written to the staff concerned that they were to be promoted on 1 January 2011, a new employment control framework was supposed to be put in place. It was, in fact, put in place in March 2011. However, we could not reverse the decision taken. We had to go ahead and promote the staff concerned because we had said we were going to do this. We had a commitment to them. We promoted them in January 2011, three months ahead of the putting in place of the new employment control framework in March. If one likes, we were three months out of sync, but it was not purposely done on our part. We proceeded in good faith with the promotions because there was no employment control framework in place on the date we had selected for the promotions.