Mr. Paul Reid:

We did not allocate the seats; they were allocated by the committee on the basis of availability. I was glad when I came in that we were sitting like this because if we were sitting down there, it would look even worse. I have been with delegations involving the Department where the Secretary General was sitting up here and I was sitting down there. That can look odd as well. Please do not read anything into it.

I have spent 12 years in the public service. I have worked for nine senior Ministers and at least 16 junior Ministers. I always promote in our organisation full respect for parliamentarians and for Oireachtas committees. This is probably my eighth committee meeting in the past nine or ten weeks. We have another two in the next week. I respect members' role as parliamentarians to hold us to account.

On the Minister of State's engagement with us, sometimes tensions happen between civil servants in the Department and the Minister, and certainly between us and Ministers, but we sit down and speak frankly. The Minister of State and I had a discussion and we ironed things out. There was an element of confusion as to whether it was a constituency meeting or a meeting that the Minister was leading on behalf of the Department. We ironed that out and moved on to a much better place in terms of focusing on the real issue I want our teams to focus on, which is how we, acknowledging that PDS is Government policy and the weaknesses we have and the failings in some areas, have a targeted set of actions. We worked this through with the Minister recently. How do we get a targeted set of actions, call it a roadmap or whatever we decide and the Minister agrees to at the end, that demonstrates our commitment, gives clarity for services about the priorities and gives targeted focus on where inequities exist? We look forward to bringing that forward with the Minister, publishing it and showing our commitment to it.

I reassure the Deputy that tensions happen now and then and that we address them. There may have been some element of confusion but we have addressed it.