Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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First, the acting up is to take account of unforeseen circumstances. The ideal situation is that the person would give the required notice and that the notice period would facilitate a seamless transition, but one can never guarantee that in life. We have to take account of unforeseen circumstances and that is why we are keeping it at six months. The six months is an outer limit. It is not a minimum period but very much the outer limit, and we hope it will never come to that.

The backfill is something that will have to be assessed at the time it arises; it is not something that we can legislate for today. However, I can make one point. Thankfully, due to the additional resources that have been allocated to the new corporate enforcement authority, with an increase of 50% in the head count, at least now we have a much better resourced and equipped body in terms of both financial resources and key personnel. It is going to be much stronger and it will have the ability to take account of unforeseen circumstances. As I said at the outset, our intention is that this would not be the way a recruitment process would be fulfilled; it is to accommodate unforeseen circumstances.