Mr. John McKeon:

All of the letters have been issued to people explaining the processes. There are 70,000 in Ireland and 7,000 outside Ireland. I believe there were 77,000 in total. We have taken on 74 staff on a temporary basis and will take on more in the new year. In January, we will start to do the exercise on recalibrating or recalculating everybody's pension entitlement. We will write to them at that time. Nobody will get a reduction. We will be writing to people telling them we have made a calculation and that it works out at a certain value. The correspondence will state they are getting an increase or that the value will remain the same. People will be able to ask for a review. It is a deciding officer's decision. If one believes a calculation has been made incorrectly, one will be able to request a review. We hope to start making the first payments of the new pension fairly early in the first quarter but it will probably take us from three to five months to get through all 70,000 odd, stating what each calculation is and getting those concerned to come onto the new system and so on. That is the current position. We will not know the numbers until we carry out the reviews.