Mr. Aidan O'Driscoll:

We have set up two legislative functions, one dealing with civil justice and the other with criminal justice. Ms Martina Colville heads one of the functions. They were established in order to leverage, to the maximum extent possible, the extraordinary skills we have in the Department in terms of developing legislation. In the past, the people working on legislation were, like every civil servant, a jack-of-all-trades. They worked on a series of other things, such as answering parliamentary questions, dealing with policy issues and so on. By having them devoted to legislation, we hope to provide a better service to Ministers and the Oireachtas.

Having worked in an EU legislative framework, I am very conscious that the Department fell behind in the transposition of EU legislation. We are trying to rectify this and I am aware of the reasons for it, but the past is the past. As part of the new functions, a priority will be to ensure we catch up on the legislation and do not fall behind again.