Dr. Aideen Hartney:

There are a couple of things there. It is for the Government to direct officials to work on matters on its own recognisance. We have looked at this area previously, for example, back in 2015. We did some research and advice on this and fed it into the system. As with any public body, we have defined resources to point at a defined number of work projects. It is challenging to balance developing work for where we know there is a customer, for want of a better word. Until recently, this has not been one of these areas. If we are asked to take it on at some stage - and the Department is looking at it now - we will of course do our best to reprioritise our current work programme to look at it. As I have said, since 2015 there has been a bit of a gap in attention to the area. We are aware work is being done in the Department on this area and it is important not to duplicate processes in an effort to look at it.