Mr. Noel Waters:

I am slightly limited. I will share the information I have with the Deputy, but I am slightly limited in that the procedure is not directly run by the Department of Justice and Equality. The ordinary process for filling a Secretary General post - again, our colleagues from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform might fill in any gaps I might have on this - is that nowadays an ad is placed in the papers. It is an open competition to the wide world. Anybody can apply. That ad is placed by the Public Appointments Service, which is effectively the State's employment agency. The terms and conditions are set out, and the requirements of the job are all published and are there available to people. People apply online. Ordinarily a group would then be brought together of senior people from within the system and from outside it, and they would assess the applications.

Depending on the number of applications, they may decide to invite some people forward for what is known as a preliminary interview. On foot of that, they would recommend those for further interview by the Top Level Appointments Commission, TLAC, which would interview the people and then nominate a person or persons for the Government to decide who should be appointed to the role. That is my understanding of the situation in very broad terms. Perhaps colleagues from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform who are here with us might be able to add something to that, if I have missed out on something.