Ms Deirdre Donaghy:

There was sanction for five in early 2017 but only one was selected. The sanction is still there. We enquired throughout 2017 whether additional appeals commissioners were needed but the response at the time was "No." This is why our concern at the moment is if only administrative staff are recruited there will still be a bottleneck at decision-making level. I am not prejudging the outcome of any review. The point is we need to be sure that whatever we put in will be effective in clearing the backlog and addressing issues.