Ms Josephine Feehily:

I would never say I have sufficient staff. The Minister would be surprised if I did. We can always put good staff to work either on debt recovery or on auditing investigation. We will always get a return for investment in relation to qualified staff.

We have increased the number of staff in the debt recovery unit, in spite of the reduction in overall head count, which was about 13% to 14% in recent years. I have additional staff and more debt management units than we had five years ago. We have almost 30 debt management units working these tiers of debt. They are not only analysed by age but also by size. We put by far the most resources to the largest debt and the newest debt before it gets a chance to get aged. We have a bias towards early intervention and major cases. Size and newness would receive more attention than the really old files, but all are under management.