Mr. Joe O'Flynn:

It would not normally be something with which our officials are associated in terms of travel; we do not travel a lot. However, this was a fairly innovative concept where support grade staff were identified as requiring assistance by way of upskilling, development opportunities and education and training. The view was that people at professional level and professional grades within the health service and local authorities had a lot of opportunity to develop their skills and talents and that in the interests of modernising the public service that all grades of staff would be facilitated by way of developing their skills and talents. I think I said in my statement that part of the huge disappointment I have about this is that there were people who were support grade staff who were working as porters and attendants and so forth who were given the opportunity to develop their skills to become nurses, EMTs or technicians. There was real value in the concept and it was a new concept. He was certainly driving it and a lot of people genuinely benefited from the developments in which he was engaged.