Mr. John McKeon:

As I stated, three separate issues arose together, the first of which related to the continued submission of old-form certificates. Our immediate response to that was to put in the auto-certification process. Although that generated several calls in August, when we implemented the auto-certification process the call volume dropped relatively quickly thereafter from September to mid-October. When we then removed the auto-certification process it revealed the underlying system issues of which we had not been aware. At that stage, call volumes went through the roof and our staff were unable to respond to the calls. We had a choice to make. We could have taken staff out of processing activities and put them on answering calls but that would have further delayed payments. We decided to put extra staff on the phones in mid-October but such staff are only of use in that regard if they can answer queries. They needed training on the IT system and the scheme and it has taken some time to do that. It is not much use for the staff answering phones to only be able to tell callers they are unable to help them. There was a lead-in time of approximately two weeks to get staff allocated and appropriately trained. We fully accept that communications on the issue has been one of the key failures we need to address.