Mr. David Moloney:

I do not believe that it has changed in recent years. A lot of the legislation that sets out the accountability has been unchanged for quite a while and some of it dates back quite far. The one change that I could identify relates to the level of accountability, this idea of the appropriate authority as being the person who can impose the most severe of sanctions. That used to be only the Minister and a Department and now for a principal officer it is the Secretary General and for a principal officer and the Assistant Secretary it is the Minister, with the Government being the appropriate authority only for the Secretary General. There has been some slight change in that. In terms of the line management responsibility for the day-to-day performance management regarding the Accounting Officer role, those are very well established roles.