Mr. Noel Waters:

Again, the process is not in my control or in the Department's control. It is in the control of the Public Appointments Service. I cannot answer who would have applied in terms of outsiders, but I can say something about outsiders. In the Department in recent months, we have changed our management board in its entirety. We have appointed three new assistant secretaries through the normal public appointments top-level appointments committee process, one of whom is from outside the Department. We have also appointed a deputy Secretary General. Recently, I have succeeded in changing the roles of all the assistant secretaries in the Department. Everyone is now doing a different job from the one they would have been doing last year.