Mr. Robert Watt:

There are two things here. We have consolidated payroll into payroll shared services. There is a massive payroll system which we provide in three different locations. We are responsible for providing payroll and pension services for hundreds of thousands of people. The transactional human resources, HR, function is consolidated in PeoplePoint in Clonskeagh. The strategic HR is managed by people in individual Departments, in partnership with Mr. Cagney who is head of HR for the Civil Service and with the people in PeoplePoint who provide the data and analytics to help them. We have gone some of the way.

There was big issue in the past as to whether we should outsource all of it but we felt that we should consolidate it, improve the technology, and get many of the efficiency gains through doing that. If we had outsourced back then, all of the gains would have gone to the outsourcing partner, so we do it in a different way. We have an in-house solution as to all of those services.