Mr. John McKeon:

That is an issue in the Department generally. The Department has age profile that has – I do not have the numbers with me – proportionately fewer staff under 30 and more staff over 50. The issue is staff are retiring. That takes time. It takes a new appeals officer a period of time. They are the most expert in the regulations and the legislation and to get that familiarity with the law and regulations take some time. We do not tend to have vacancies the appeals office; we fill them as quickly as we can. Nevertheless, a new appeals officer will not run at the same pace as an appeals officer who has being the job for ten, 15 or 20 years. That is just the nature of it across the Department generally when it comes to that type of staff profile and people are retiring. It is a challenge we have everywhere across the public service and many private employers would have it as well. It is just an observation.

On the other issue the Deputy raised about the correspondence received, as I said, I certainly attended the appeals officer conference and I did not get it. We have dealt with these issues. We are engaging with the staff unions on the new regulations as well and that is going through the normal staff engagement process. I would expect any issues to come up as part of that. If the committee can share, or perhaps it cannot, the correspondence it received. We can certainly look at it, although I do not know what the process is there. However, certainly we will examine it. Honestly, my experience in talking to the appeals officers at the conference was general acceptance that the regulations where we were going was the right direction to go. Having said that, I understand perhaps sometimes people are loathe to call out the Secretary General, which one can imagine. We will certainly look into it.