Mr. Jim Walsh:

That is not my experience. We are meeting the members of the task force next week, the Minister of State met them recently and we met them earlier in the year. We have engagement with the task force through all of our strategic implementation groups, of which there are six. Last year, we held a big conference in the Department with the local task forces, which was a joint conference addressed by the Minister and the senior official from the Department of the Taoiseach. I do not know what the experience was before but, as the Minister of State said, we have massive respect for the chairpersons, who are voluntary and independent, and we work with them in a collective manner. We are completely committed to that.

In my own background, I have done a lot of work with non-governmental organisations and we have our own structures in the Department whereby we work with NGOs. We are committed to that kind of engagement with civil society organisations. I would be disappointed if we were not delivering on that.