Mr. David Costello:

The director general is correct that there is a mix. Most of the 130 people working in the office are civil servants. Many people on the panel work in the Four Courts doing other work. They could be involved in planning law or human rights law and the only way we could encourage people to apply for a panel was to offer them flexibility. Some members of the panel work in the office all day, every day but the vast majority leave and come back. However, they commit to doing at least three interviews a week, which is what we want them to do, and to provide the relevant follow-up reports. It was just a matter of flexibility.

Similarly, we are running a competition to recruit more people. There has been a fair amount of interest in that but if I was to say I wanted full-time people with legal qualifications to come in under this contract for service, I would not get them because some of them are doing other jobs and want to continue to do them and then come to work for us on a fee per case basis. There are strict rules within the contract about conflicts of interest and so on. They must declare them, but we felt this was the most flexible way to use people to ensure we met our scheduling and interviewing requirements.