Mr. Joe O'Brien:

I suspect that is one of the reasons but there is a more important priority in terms of a public service that serves a very large number of people in the country being open and transparent. We have not infrequent situations where we get letters back from the Department which are either unsigned or illegible in terms of the signatures. There is a case in point in the report. One of the case studies refers to an official who refused to give his name to someone who was looking for it. While I can understand why people would be reluctant to do it, its potential for changing how things are done from the front-line upwards makes it worth it. It is certainly something we are going to keep pushing. We have deliberately picked it as one of the two matters today as it is a simple idea in some respects. While there might be complications in terms of winning people over, in terms of accountability, transparency and how that would impact on how officials do their business would make it a very worthwhile measure to push.