Mr. Brendan Byrne:

I have been in this post for four and half years. In case people think that I am an unreasonable individual, I must put on the record that there are some very good and very progressive, engaging people in the SFPA. I have to acknowledge that publicly. As I see it looking in the four and a half years that I have been around, sometimes what is agreed at levels of management or middle management in the SFPA does not necessarily trickle down to port level. If people look at the Wolfe report in detail they will see that it addresses that issue of restrained organisation and, likewise, in the PriceWaterhouseCoopers report, there were issues there that there is not a consistency of approach across the board. While there is a movement within the SFPA for more engagement, that is not trickling down. All you need is one port officer to be out of kilter and the entire project falls. That is the issue this committee will have to look at and I strongly advocate that the members of this committee visits ports because I could direct the committee to ports that are stymied because of interpretations of port officers.