Ms Josephine Feehily:

An area in which we have had good experience in the past couple of years was in opening recruitment at assistant principal and principal officer level to the private sector. In 2010, we advertised for principal officers for our large cases division. We made four appointments and they all came from the private sector. We advertised for principal officers in information technology and two out of three or four appointments came from the private sector. We advertised for assistant principals for audit and investigation in 2010 and made 23 or 24 appointments, of whom 22 came from the private sector. We are very open to taking in qualified individuals from the private sector at the levels at which we make the decisions. We have also engaged a number of administrative officers - I do not have the numbers to hand but a significant proportion of them came from the private sector or directly from college. In recent years we have certainly opened up middle and senior management grades and have had a number of interesting applicants and good candidates. We are happy to be able to make appointments from the private sector.