Ms Joan Gordon:

I will pick up on that point. I absolutely will reassure appeals officers at the next available opportunity that all that is required now under the current position is to have a discussion with their line manager. That is purely a management role. I would expect that if the Secretary General were to ask me to discuss something with him, I would do that because he is Secretary General.

On the staffing of the office, roughly, just for ease of numbers, at any time there are 80 or more staff in the office. That breakdown is probably 50:50 between administrative staff and appeals officers. At the moment, there are 40 appeals officers that are on a full-time equivalent of 40.2. We have lost quite a lot of our experienced appeals officers over a number of years. I do not have all of the figures to hand, but my recollection is that 12 left the office, mainly on retirement, in 2021 and I think the figure is two so far this year. However, in years prior to that, many people left mainly on retirement, but not exclusively. A small number left on promotion.

The Deputy asked whether there will be an in-person element of the IT system. The system is an IT system to manage the flow of files; it is largely paper based at the moment. That in itself does not facilitate in-person hearings. It will not stop it, obviously, but the decision to have in-person hearings is coming from the legislative requirement.