Mr. John McKeon:

It is not below the Civil Service average yet. It has come down from approximately 13.5 days three or four years ago to approximately 11.5 days now. A couple of things are different about our Department compared to others, which I mentioned the last time. We have a lot of front-line staff and that creates its own issues. Our staff generally have an older age profile than other Departments. A total of 94% or 95% of all sick leave in our Department is certified by a medical practitioner. The average is 90% in the Civil Service. We tend to have more longer duration cases and it is related to the age profile of staff. The figure now is approximately 700 people over 60. We have 100 people under 30 and more than half of our staff are aged over 55 years. They are the kind of metrics. The people who get ill in that age category, in my experience, they have genuine long-term illnesses. I have experienced throughout my career. We have 80 cases of very long-term illness that account for a quarter of all of our sick leave. They are people with very profound and serious illnesses. We look after them, and I do not apologise for that, but that is the difference.