Ms Maria Browne:

I will. In terms of incoming staff, the Public Appointments Service, PAS, does external competitions for us and we do a number of our own competitions as well. We do specialist competitions in certain areas of the legal stream. We find, for example, that is difficult to get staff in IT and we are going to the market again to fill those positions. It is difficult to source IT expertise from within the service. Another issue is the periods of notice people in the private sector have to give before they can come in, which could be three months plus. We had a situation where we were waiting a considerable time for somebody to come in. It is a combination of the time to do the competitions, the time that it takes people to come in through vetting but also the speed with which some people can leave the office. Following the mobility that was introduced across the Civil Service, we have a lot of people who are from outside Dublin and they take the opportunity to move, which adds to the situation in terms of the throughput.