Mr. John Moran:

I thank the Deputy very much. I am certainly flattered by all of the comments to the effect that I should remain in the Department, particularly as they appear to indicate I could contribute something more. The Department is now much more transparent in its operations and to continue the Deputy's analogy, we are actually watching the sequel to the movie via the Internet and reading about it on the website.

It is important that people understand there is nothing sinister about my decision to depart. I returned to the system in 2010. It has certainly been an intense and fun four year period in terms of what has happened. It is important to understand what is involved when one is obliged to deal with what, in effect, is crisis-management. Everyone can remember what the system was like previously. We have circulated a number of papers which detail what has been achieved in recent years. There are benchmarks one could try to identify in the context of when one should leave. I do not think it is necessarily a good idea for people to always assume that they are going to remain in the same place forever.

I have been saying to many of the people involved, not only this crew around me who are now well capable of continuing with the job, but those we could not find space for because there are only a certain limited number of seats in the committee room, that it has always been a management principle of mine that I should always find a way to make myself redundant. If a person becomes indispensable in any way in his job he may miss an even bigger challenge or opportunity ahead to which he could contribute.