Ms Anne Marie Hoey:

As Mr. Reid said, we have over 4,000 consultant posts approved. Some 8% of those are brand new development posts that have been approved in the past couple of years. There is a lead-in time associated with being able to fill consultant posts and particularly the newly-created posts.

With regard to what we are doing, we are improving our processes and the turnaround time for recruitment. We have revised all our processes and reduced the time to recruit by 40% in the past year. We recruit directly through the section 38 agencies and the Public Appointments Service. We can see the benefit of the improved process. In this year alone there has been a net increase of 150 new consultants. That is in addition to replacing the turnover rate that arises. We are also working to improve our international reach with the marketing of consultant posts. All efforts are continuing to try to maximise our recruitment efforts and to fill our consultant posts.