Mr. Hubert Loftus:

One of the practices that I have put in place is the calling of face-to-face meetings with the ETBs, rather than having constant correspondence running back and forth between us and the individual ETBs. I have been in this role for the last two years and during that period we have met representatives of all of the ETBs face-to-face. Where we approved requests that had been submitted for filling vacancies, we gave that approval either at that meeting or immediately thereafter. Where we were unable to approve the filling of a vacancy, meanwhile, we used the meeting to explain the reasons for that, be it a matter of affordability or indeed comparability with other ETBs.