Mr. Derek Moran:

I worked in the Department up to the end of 1999 and then went off for three and a half years and did other things, sometimes, working for the Department and part of that time working for the Department of Health. When I came back in 2003, there had been a lot of change ... that very few of the personnel that I would have recognised and there was a concern at that stage about the economic capacity and that wasn't just me coming in, that was the staff themselves to be fair to them and I don't think I'd be showing any disrespect to them in that regard. Coming in July '03, I did ask them to sit down and sort of self-diagnose, you know, what are the problems they saw, what are the things that we needed to do. And among the things that they sort of came up with is ... and came back to me on is things about getting the right people and having a career path for economists within the Department, the need for training and development. If you can't buy in, if you don't have the wherewithal, the financial wherewithal to buy people in, well then develop your own people. Improved communications - I think it's hard to believe at this stage that for eight years, the economics unit in the Department of Finance was split, one in ... part of it in Mount Street and part of it in Merrion Street and in what's a discursive, you know, set of interactions, that's a very odd and unsustainable thing that some of the organisation structure, some of the economists were mixed in with budgetary policy and they needed to be separated and we used to have stronger links with the ESRI. That ... they were the sort of key things that came back and effectively, you know, over the next period of time starting in early 2004, one of the key things they had ... saw, is that we had a group of good undergraduates who had come in but we didn't have anybody more experienced to develop them and bring them along. I would have gone to Mr. McNally, who was the second secretary at that stage and said, "Listen, there are these range of concerns, you know, and we need to do something about it." And I suppose, the things that we did initially is to bring people into one location, you know, so that you could get that interaction that you'd be missing, to clarify the budgetary and the economic functions, that they weren't mixed and to have some sort of strategic plan around HR and get in the right people. So, for example, just in practical terms, went to the Central Bank and seconded an experienced economist who has since, you know, ten years later became the chief economist in the Department. We recruited a PhD from students ... somebody who was completing their PhD in Trinity at the time and brought her in. Got an experienced economist, who was finishing up tenure with the NDP evaluation unit, and bring them in, to give that core of senior experience to try develop the other people and to also take, I mean again, this thing ... and you have to remember, it's salary levels in the private sector in terms of attracting economists for much higher than they could have been in the private ... in the public sector, is to take some of our very bright younger administrative officers and send them out to UCD to do a masters in ... to bring their skills up ... to do a masters in economic science, which we did with two of them. Incidentally, having spent that money, we no longer have them. That's always the risk you take, you know, that you invest in people and they move on but it's a risk that you have to take and we continue to do. So, there was a blend of them and just a little bit later in 2005 I went on and, you know, went and recruited ten additional graduates and to try build up the capacity. So, there was a capacity issue.