Ms Oonagh McPhillips:

Responsibility for a number of agencies was transferred during 2017, as the Comptroller and Auditor General has said. Again, this move is in line with recommendations in the Toland report. Obviously, these moves are a matter for Government and policy, but we continue to evaluate the strategic fit of agencies within the Department with a view to achieving better alignment.

An ongoing and key aspect of the change programme is the proposed restructuring of the Department, which members will have heard about. In 2016, we engaged external experts to help us evaluate the broad structure of the organisation and to advise how it could be more effectively organised to deliver on strategic and business objectives.

Members will also be aware of the report of the independent review of the response of the Department to a request for a document from the disclosures tribunal, carried out by Mr. Michael Collins, SC, which was published at the end of March. Obviously, I cannot trespass on the tribunal's ongoing deliberations but I note the finding that there was no attempt to conceal information from the tribunal and that officials acted in good faith at all times. It is also reassuring that the review found no evidence of any failure to comply with orders from the tribunal. It is of course a matter of concern that emails were not located as part of the discovery process, and we are putting new measures in place that are aimed at ensuring that an oversight of this kind cannot happen in future. These new measures include the use of specialist consultants, where needed, for discovery and the establishment of a separate unit to interact with tribunals and commissions. There is also a Civil Service-wide initiative under way in respect of electronic file management which will help to ensure that electronic documents can more easily be associated with relevant files. The report of this was submitted to the Department's management board in October 2017, and the primary recommendation - sorry, I am after messing up my own pages, I think. I am on the page that begins "The report was submitted to the management board in October 2017". This concerns the restructuring. I have just a few paragraphs left.