Mr. John McKeon:

Yes. We are making a number of changes to the regulations on appeals. We are increasing the amount of time from 21 days to 60 days that a person has to make an appeal. There is also the option, at the chief appeals officer's discretion, to extend that to 180 days. This will give people much more time to get an appeal. We are setting a period of three weeks for the Department to respond to any appeal. If the Department does not respond within three weeks, the appeals officer can determine the appeal based on the information in front of them. At present, the appeals officer can decide to determine the appeal on a summary or on an oral hearing basis. We are making it that if the appeals officer does so on a summary basis they have to set out the reason they did not do an oral hearing.