Mr. Conan McKenna:

The answer to that, Chairman, is that over the years there has been an ongoing relationship between the Department and the Courts Service regarding the courts policy division. The Department is in constant contact with the Courts Service, and these issues arise all the time, including through parliamentary questions, which are regularly put down about wards of courts and these types of issues. Have we had an ongoing resource dialogue with the Courts Service over the years, during the economic downturn, if you like? Yes, and every year decisions have to be made about allocation of resources. Every part of the justice sector was in extreme difficulty during the down period, and nobody could get all the resources they needed to do all the things that they wanted, including the Courts Service and the Department itself. We are in a very good situation now, where the Courts Service has the capacity and the delegated authority to appoint staff to help it do these things, and its budgets have been improving in recent years, but I cannot say anything that would give major comfort regarding the years from 2008 onwards, because all across the system we were in absolutely extreme difficulty in terms of resources and prioritising what we had.