Mr. Robert Watt:

With regard to the moratorium, in effect the Departments decide themselves. They have demands for more staff so the first filter is the Departments to say "No" because they are closest to what is going on, service needs and they know their activities better than we do. Then it comes to us and we have to make an adjudication. They make a case and it is decided. This part is subject to negotiation as well as the Deputy will appreciate. If somebody is looking for ten staff, he or she will ask for 30. There is an element of gaming but that is the way it is. It is a negotiation. They know we do not have the resources or money and we are trying to stay within the ECF so there is a process of negotiation. The front-line staff are key vacancies based on the criteria set out by the Department. It is not perfect. There has to be an arbitrary element to this naturally as to how can we make judgments about recruiting a person in the justice sector and the value of that person compared to the value of the a person in the health system, as mentioned by the Deputy. It is difficult to make those judgments across different sectors. We have to as best we can between the Departments and ourselves figure out what needs to go through.

It is not the case that the Department of Finance got everything it wanted. The Department was looking for a higher number but I cannot remember the exact details. There was a discussion between myself and Mr. John Moran, the Secretary General at the Department and the Minister for Finance made his views known. The Department had to respond to a number of reports that were critical of performance, including the Nyberg and Wright reports. Part of the changes in that Department and in my Department reflect implementation of those recommendations. It is not to say that all of it is happening. The reality is that the policy in terms of numbers will be tight for a good few years. We are going to be living with this situation where we cannot satisfy all the demands and we will have to make difficult decisions and difficult trade-offs. There is no perfect way of dealing with this. There is an arbitrary element to it but we tend to respond as best we can to particular Departments and when a strong case is made, the Minister will agree to lifting the moratorium and making an exception.