Mr. Ned Costello:

I apologise for not responding. The appeals process is statutory and provided for in the Act so there are appeals officers. As I said earlier, there was a period, historically, when people were not sufficiently made aware of their right to appeal and this was reflected in the reports of the appeals officers, to which reference was made. That was corrected from mid-2016 and people are now informed in writing. We have provided sample letters to the committee showing the correspondence people receive in the supplementary information we provide. That piece of bad practice has been corrected.

Senator Ruane asked about the volume of complaints. We have attempted to make it clear that we are aware of a significant focus on the part of Caranua, since around the middle of 2016, on customer service issues. There may be other interpretations but we believe there is a correlation between the fact that people are less dissatisfied now than they were in the earlier period of Caranua's operations. The current acting chief executive, whom we meet regularly as part of our governance supervisory role, is absolutely dedicated to customer service. I believe improvements are being seen but there is a legacy period when there were teething or establishment troubles while the organisation was getting off the ground and finding its feet while trying to develop processes on a greenfield site. There continue to be repercussions for people from that period, which we have heard about today.