Mr. Brian Purcell:

I am talking in general terms. If the letter comes to me for onward transmission to the Minister, the norm would be that if a response is to go out or if a matter is to be examined, it would not generally go to the Minister until someone had dealt with it and prepared whatever the response was going to be. If there was an issue that needed to be examined before a response could be issued, the norm would be that this would happen before it would go there, because otherwise a situation would inevitably arise where a letter comes in and the first thing is what is the response. That would be the normal procedure.