Despite the secretarial assistants exhausting every measure at their disposal, the Minister and his Department have refused to review the situation. The secretarial assistants and their representatives have pleaded for examination of this matter by the Minister. They have exhausted every channel. Fine Gael, therefore, was obliged to refer the matter to the Labour Court on 7 March 2003. To date, the Department has not even had the courtesy to respond to the Labour Court's invitation to attend a conciliation conference to consider the issue.