Mr. Justice Alan Mahon:

Since we introduced that practice, which is only a bit of office administration for us, I do not think we have had anyone who has missed out. There could be people who have not bothered to contact us because they were outside the year time limit but we did have a few cases before we introduced that new system of people who were losing out by a few months and there was nothing we could do about it because there is no discretion allowed for extending the time. Since we introduced these new practices, we have not had any such cases. The odd one we have had would be years out so it would not have mattered whether it was there or four years. We get the odd referral like that. I am much less concerned now about the 12 months limitation period being too short than I was in the past.