Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): We have with us Ann Watt, the director of Pivotal, who has been with us before, and Tom Burns, a researcher at Pivotal. You are both very welcome. Thank you for coming. Ann, will you provide us with an opening statement? Members, as always, indicate if you wish to ask a question. You have the briefing pack in front of you.

Ms Ann Watt (Pivotal): Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Committee, for the invitation to be here today. I hope that you have had a chance to look at our written evidence. Tom led our project last year looking at policy delivery in the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS), which resulted in the report that I have here and which I commend to your reading. What we will talk about today will be drawn, largely, from that report about policy delivery in Northern Ireland. The report was not exclusively about the Civil Service, but it had a huge amount to say about the Civil Service. We are glad to be able to share some of those findings with you. Our research was based on 30 research interviews with former Ministers, MLAs, spads, civil servants, business leaders and voluntary and community sector representatives. It is a really thorough piece of research containing a wealth of evidence. It covers broader issues than just NICS issues, but it has a lot to say that is relevant to the Committee's inquiry. We will centre our comments around that report, but we will also try to bring in other evidence that we have looked at, most obviously the recent Northern Ireland Audit Office report and Deloitte's 'The State of the State' report, as well as some of Pivotal's broader work in monitoring delivery by the Executive.

We have five headline themes to share with you in this opening statement, and then we can move on to questions. The themes draw very much on the policy delivery report. The first theme is that Northern Ireland Civil Service leaders operate in an unstable political context and have to manage complex lines of authority. Our research found that, often, political instability means that civil servants' immediate concern is simply keeping the ship afloat through various crises. Interviewees in our research pointed to Brexit, COVID, fragile political relationships and frequent collapses of the Executive as challenging circumstances that have had to be managed. Time, energy and resources are used up in just surviving, leaving much less capacity for pushing forward policy development and delivery. All those pressures have left many civil servants fatigued and dejected. Nevertheless, we heard many examples of where strong and consistent Civil Service leadership of a project had made change happen. Moreover, we were also told that the complexity in lines of authority in the NICS can make providing stable, clear leadership harder. As you heard in your previous session this afternoon, permanent secretaries are responsible to their Ministers, and the head of the Civil Service has no formal authority over them. Management of the NICS overall sits with the Finance Department. The NICS board provides strategic leadership for the NICS, but all Departments operate as separate entities and are responsible to their Minister rather than collectively.

The second big theme is that the NICS needs a much greater mix of people and experience, particularly specialist skills. The Northern Ireland Civil Service remains dominated by generalists, as per the traditional Civil Service model. We note that, in Great Britain, the Civil Service has moved significantly away from that model in the past decade, with much greater recruitment of people with skills in digital, data, procurement, commercial, project delivery, analysis and science. In Great Britain, staff are also encouraged to stay in posts longer to develop skills and knowledge. The NICS has been slower to change, with a shortage of specialists, particularly in digital, data, commercial and AI roles. We also found in our research that there is a hesitancy to use secondments and too much reliance on paying external consultants, who, as one of our interviewees said rather cynically, "borrow your watch to tell you the time".

Some interviewees, particularly those from the voluntary and community sector, told us that civil servants are far too removed from the real world and that much more connection to how policies are delivered in practice is needed. Interviewees from business and the voluntary sector pointed out the significant churn generated by frequent job moves in the Civil Service and that that is a barrier to building meaningful relationships with external partners and to effective delivery. That pattern could also give a message to civil servants that staying in one role to acquire deep expertise is not valued.

Our third theme is a culture of risk aversion standing in the way of progress. Our research found that there is huge respect for the abilities, commitment and hard work of civil servants but that deep, cultural issues reduce their effectiveness. The issue mentioned most by our interviewees is risk aversion, particularly since RHI. We were told that the NICS risk appetite is in the gutter, meaning that things move at a glacial pace. Often, process is more highly valued than achieving outcomes. That risk aversion slows down delivery and acts as a significant brake on progress.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Has that got worse since RHI?

Ms Watt: That is what we were told in the research. We talked to people who have been involved, as civil servants, MLAs or Ministers, and they said that risk aversion was always an issue but that it had got worse. Attention is paid to whether public money is spent properly, which, of course, is important, but much less attention is paid to whether that spending is effective in delivering outcomes or is having an impact. Our view is that that low-risk appetite casts doubt over the prospect for transforming public services, because transformation necessitates new ways of thinking and finding innovative solutions. There was an insightful quote about that in Deloitte's recent 'The State of the State' report, where a senior leader said about transformation:

Another said that transformation:

Our fourth theme, which came up in your previous session this afternoon, is that Northern Ireland's institutional structures hinder joint working across Departments. You had a long conversation about that with the previous witnesses. It has long been observed that Governments generally operate in silos or struggle not to operate in silos. The Northern Ireland Executive suffer from that more than most because of our institutional structures. As one of our interviewees put it:

The lack of collective authority over the Executive at a political and administrative level also makes it much harder to drive delivery and leadership from the top. The First Minister and deputy First Minister have no formal authority over their Executive colleagues. That is passed down to civil servants because there is no strong centre of government. Departments, as separate legal entities, are not bound by collective responsibility, except where agreed such as with the Programme for Government (PFG), but, even then, there is no enforcement mechanism to maintain it.

The fifth theme is data. Data is collected but not necessarily used well. We found that there are slow processes and endless checking in Northern Ireland Civil Service practices, meaning that data that has been collected is sometimes out of date by the time it is ready for use. That makes it much harder for policy and delivery to be responsive to current, accurate data. Data-sharing can be a challenge, between Departments and within Departments. The greater emphasis on the data profession that is being established may help with some of those issues. The use of targets in strategies and policies can help to set direction and drive accountability, but our research found that civil servants often fear targets becoming hostages to fortune. We note that the Programme for Government includes only a handful of targets, so it is still unclear how success will be measured against the nine priorities. That is another theme that came up in the Committee's previous evidence session this afternoon.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): I should say that it came up yesterday as well, to no avail.

Ms Watt: Finally, we have some brief suggestions for how performance and culture in the Northern Ireland Civil Service might be improved. Our suggestions are based on the findings in our research, and this is not intended to be an exhaustive list. It is important to say that improving performance and culture in the NICS is all about people. People are the greatest asset of the NICS. Those people need to be recruited, managed, developed and inspired to deliver as best they can. This is all about people. We note, from the recent NI Audit Office report:

to their delivering effectively. That is very concerning.

Our first suggestion is that the Civil Service should aim to have in its workforce a mixed economy of generalists and specialists. Developing deep expertise should be valued, and the ongoing work to develop job families should assist progression and help to create greater career specialisms. There should be much more encouragement and facilitation of secondments in and out of the NICS: civil servants should be enabled to get experience of other sectors, including in front-line service delivery.

Our second suggestion is that innovation and change should be part of the day-to-day culture of the NICS, rather than being feared or resisted. Allocation of people to roles should be flexible and agile in order to respond to changing circumstances and priorities, making more use of a project team model. Civil servants should be reallocated to Departments and teams as required, rather than there being permanent roles and teams that are rigid for long periods. Innovation and measured risk-taking should be encouraged. All those aspects are essential to respond to changing circumstances and drive public service modernisation and transformation.

Our third suggestion is that there should be much more focus on whether improved outcomes are being achieved for the public, rather than work being concentrated on adherence to internal processes. On that topic, we repeat Pivotal's previous recommendation that there should be proper data, targets and reporting on the delivery of Programme for Government priorities.

Our fourth suggestion is that consideration should be given to changing lines of accountability. We note that 'New Decade, New Approach' states that civil servants should work for the Executive as a whole, not just for their Minister, but that that approach has never been taken. Our report suggests that the head of the Civil Service should be the senior responsible officer for delivery of the Programme for Government. Some of our interviewees suggested that she should be the accounting officer for the NICS as a whole.

Our final suggestion — this is where I will finish — is that the effective delivery of the commitments in the NICS people strategy is essential, particularly those on performance management, sickness absence, vacancies, recruitment and strategic workforce planning. The recent Audit Office report found that there had been very disappointing progress in many areas over the past five years, so the new people strategy is welcome. The necessary changes need to be accelerated, and delivery needs to be closely monitored. Action by all Departments is needed to deliver the people strategy. Although the Department of Finance leads on the policy, it is for each Department to manage its people day-to-day. Delivery of the people strategy is, therefore, the collective responsibility of all Ministers and senior civil servants.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Thank you very much. In broad terms, would you say that the Northern Ireland Civil Service is fit for purpose?

Ms Watt: You have to look at the public service outcomes that we are experiencing and at our public finance position. Looking at those, you could not say that either one is in a positive place. Ultimately, it is Ministers who make decisions, and civil servants serve them, but responsibility for the achievement of any of those outcomes has to fall on Ministers and civil servants. Therefore, there has to be responsibility on civil servants for the poor quality of outcomes across public services at present.

Is the Civil Service fit for purpose? The obvious place to look if you want to answer that question is the recent Audit Office report, which looked at exactly that. I think that it found significant shortcomings, particularly that its previous recommendations had been only partially implemented, so, yes, there are significant issues that need to be addressed. I would say that, if you dig down a further layer, we need a much greater mix of people in the Civil Service — a much greater mix of skills. It needs to be more agile and more willing to change, to promote innovation and new ideas and to drive transformation, which is so essential across public services.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): That is helpful. You have said that there is a leadership issue in the Civil Service but that it is connected to political challenges. If I am representing you correctly, the note that you sent us makes clear that the political instability and the political issues that are well rehearsed here — some are structural, given the nature of how, for very good historical reasons, we have organised ourselves — have evolved in ways that have created particular political dynamics that are not always easy to manage and led to regular collapses of the institutions. If it were possible to adjust for that or strip that out, could we say that, were we to be in a situation where, for example, we had more functioning institutions — still power-sharing institutions, joint First Ministers and all those things but there had been less instability and fewer or perhaps no periods of collapse — the Civil Service would be in a better place, or would there still be fairly significant issues?

Ms Watt: Without a doubt, it would be in a better place. One of the messages that came out clearly in our research was that the Civil Service, especially at senior levels, was completely preoccupied with keeping the show on the road. It was a day-to-day struggle to maintain the institutions — well, to do what they could at a Civil Service level to maintain the institutions.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Is that at a political level, while their Minister is there to ensure that the situation is managed?

Ms Watt: Yes.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): This is not your analogy or their analogy, it is mine: it is a slightly dysfunctional family. Mum and dad or granny and granda are rowing, so you want to keep things on an even keel. It is a difficult Christmas, with crockery flying —.

Ms Watt: All the time, energy and bandwidth go on sustaining the institutions, and that leaves not a great deal for pushing forward policy delivery and development. That message came through clearly, particularly from people who had been at senior levels in the Civil Service. Your hypothetical question is that, if we had a much more stable political situation, would the Civil Service be delivering better? Yes, without a doubt, it would, because it would have much more time and energy left to do the day-to-day business. However, and this is where you get to the end of the hypothetical and do not really know where you are, there would still be questions about having the right mix of people and skills, the culture of risk aversion and so on.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): I want to cover a couple of other things before I bring in members. My first is connected to the broad question of skills and talent management. There has been a persistent issue around performance management and the use of "satisfactory" and "unsatisfactory" being blunt and binary. I think that I am right in saying that the UK Civil Service and, I presume, the Irish Civil Service, do not use a system in which, pretty much for statistical purposes, 99% of the workforce go into a "satisfactory" box and a tiny number of people go into the "unsatisfactory" box. It is worth saying that the head of people, Jill Minne, told us that some larger workforces are, in general, moving away from rigid box markings and towards a richer, ongoing appraisal model in which people are not simply forced into boxes. Ours is an unusual situation in which we force people into boxes. Virtually everybody in a 20,000-plus workforce goes into one box, which is marked "satisfactory", and a statistically tiny number of people go into "unsatisfactory". That appears to be a challenge. It is not doing either of two things: it does not seem to be an effective box-marking system, nor is it rich, ongoing appraisal.

Ms Watt: I am not claiming to be an HR expert, but, after spending whatever number of years of my career in various bits of the public sector, now in the think tank sector, my observation is that the accepted wisdom about performance management changes a lot over time. We go from three boxes to five boxes to four boxes to two boxes to no boxes. I will bow to other people's expertise on that. However, I have never worked in a system that has had only two boxes. I find that too rigid: adequate and not adequate. It also misses the opportunity to recognise and reward people who are performing well.

From my management experience rather than anything else, I can say that the conversations that you have are much more important than the boxes that people end up in, but, over the years, I have observed that there can be a fixation on box markings in large organisations. I do not know the reasons for the two boxes that the NICS has had, but the system does not seem to have served the Civil Service particularly well.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): The point about generalist versus specialist came out in the Coghlin inquiry. Obviously, the effort and the intention are to recruit more specialists into the Northern Ireland Civil Service — you talked about data specialists. Why is that such a challenge here? Why is the kind of "old-school mandarin generalist" — to use that phrase — such a persistent, sticky challenge to what should be a cultural preference in the Civil Service?

Ms Watt: There are several things, the first of which is that we do what we have always done, which I have observed in many areas of the public sector here. That needs to be challenged, and it needs to be challenged on all fronts, not just on this front. As I said, the GB Civil Service has advanced in that area in the past decade. That has not happened in Northern Ireland, albeit it is maybe about to happen here. There is a greater need now for specialist skills in the like of data, AI, procurement and project management than there was in the past, perhaps, and we have not caught up with that need. The Civil Service more widely — not just here — has been guilty of thinking that generalists can turn their hand to anything, but they cannot, and they certainly cannot do so well. We have learned that to our cost.

Mr Tom Burns (Pivotal): I will add to that. As Ann has pointed out, the Home Civil Service has, in the past 10 years, demonstrated a move towards the more mixed economy that we have advocated. If you look back at the past decade here, you will see that it has been marked persistently by collapses or crises of different guises. That points to how difficult it is to diversify the workforce and move in that direction when you are so preoccupied with keeping the ship afloat or in the water, and there is a quote to that effect in our report. Maybe, if there is a period of greater stability going forward, we can look towards that more mixed economy model, but, obviously, significant challenges in the past 10 years meant that we could not have kept up with, say, the GB Civil Service.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): I will bring in members in a second. On the point about the head of the Civil Service, which is a subject that has come up, it is unusual that we have this person who is in a kind of coordinating or, perhaps, figurehead role but does not have very much actual line management responsibility. They have some line management responsibility for permanent secretaries, but there is lack of clarity on their own reporting structures. There is also a lack of ability to direct others on delivery, whether that is on HR issues or even the PFG. Is the strangeness of that role a structural challenge for the Northern Ireland Civil Service?

Ms Watt: Yes, I think that it is. It sits alongside the lack of a strong centre of government at a political level. The First Minister and deputy First Minister do not have any authority over departmental Ministers beyond, I suppose, whatever collective commitment they can reach around, say, delivering a Programme for Government or whatever it is, or beyond political connections between different Ministers. It is a feature of our system in the same way as we have individual Ministers and not collective responsibility. We also have civil servants working for individual Ministers and a head of the Civil Service who does not have that authority. It is a symptom of the institutional structures, and it is hard to see how that will change. In our policy delivery report, we suggested that the head of the Civil Service could be made accountable for the delivery of the Programme for Government overall, which would give her more authority in that realm of the PFG priorities. It would give her more authority over permanent secretaries in other Departments, but that would be a stretch of the institutional arrangements, I think.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Indeed. The fact that the head of the Civil Service is not an accounting officer means that they are unique in the Civil Service in that regard. Thanks. I will bring in other members, starting with the Deputy Chair.

Ms Forsythe: Thanks to you both for coming. I really like your recommendation on changing the day-to-day culture to be one of innovation. That cuts to the heart of a lot of this. Your report includes feedback from somebody who thought that the Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee were there to beat up civil servants. I was previously on the Public Accounts Committee, and you very much feel that attitude coming through from some, but not all. That is a challenge, and that attitude needs to be pushed back against. We need openness, accountability and transparency in the Civil Service, and it is a challenge to get the good messaging out.

At the Public Accounts Committee, there were times when civil servants were very open about the challenges that they faced, which gave a good opportunity for us as a Committee and as elected representatives to make recommendations to help with the structures and the funding. We also had evidence on where things were going well and made recommendations that those things should be done more. We had, on reducing adult reoffending, a voluntary and community organisation doing something good, and we were able to recommend rolling that out to other organisations. On access to GPs, we were able to make recommendations with the Patient and Client Council when it came in. We listened to those voices more on that cross-cutting element of the work. You have made that recommendation on the culture piece, and I totally agree with you, but it is a huge challenge. I do not know how we face it or how embedded the culture and the need to change it are.

Have you any thoughts about how we push that through? What can we as elected representatives do to support the process?

Mr Burns: The unease with the Public Accounts Committee and the Audit Office stems, I think, from the wider risk aversion that we found in the Civil Service. In the interviews, we found that risk aversion increased post RHI, as did many of these issues. Sometimes, civil servants prefer to be behind the scenes, and the spotlight and public accountability can cause them some nervousness. It also points to the fact that, because the institutions have not been consistently around, there has not been time to build healthy relationships between the political and administrative institutions. Also, with semi-autonomous bodies, such as the Audit Office, more positive and constructive working relationships can be built up. The Civil Service sometimes feels that it keeps the ship afloat, and that, when all the other issues come to the fore, it has not had the chance to deal with them, but those issues get the headlines rather than the behind-the-scenes work that it consistently does.

One of our interviewees mentioned, only half in jest, the work that was done when the institutions had collapsed. There was the general administrative work, and projects were taken forward, such as Project Stratum, which involved Fibrus extending broadband access in rural areas. That project was driven forward in a period of political stasis when the Civil Service grabbed the bull by the horns and moved it forward. There is definitely a space for the political and administrative institutions to find the areas where we have a shared concern to make something better, and the PFG may be the perfect place to constructively find where one can help the other. It goes back to the point about leadership from political leaders and senior civil servants, which we have already talked about.

The other institutions, such as the Assembly more broadly, and particularly the Public Accounts Committee and the Audit Office, can work to critique that, as is their job, but they also need to support it and show where the good work is. We often find in our work that we do not want to be overly critical all the time; we want to show the good examples. We hope that the report points out numerous times when good work was done by the Civil Service and the high regard in which it is held by many people. However, there is definitely work that can be done to improve the culture that comes from risk aversion. We need a more confident, strident Civil Service and, going forward, to work with the other institutions to benefit that.

Ms Forsythe: Everyone talks about wanting to see transformation, but what does it look like, and how is it delivered? Again, I welcome the fact that you have made constructive comments and recommendations throughout the report about what we can do going forward, which is what we are looking for. I noted your comments about the importance of the voluntary and community sector, and I consistently raise the point that we do not have a true quantification of how much of the Programme for Government is delivered by that sector and the need for it to work more closely with civil servants. You give a specific example of the feedback, and we must break down the barriers. We may need to make that more explicit in the Programme for Government and set the tone from the top, because the voluntary and community sector is often seen as separate from the Civil Service. There is a body of work to align the two sectors and make sure that we get the best use from them working together.

Ms Watt: You are absolutely right. The delivery of public services by the voluntary and community sector is absolutely indispensable and essential. Without it, a large proportion of what we see as essential services would disappear and collapse. There is the ongoing issue with the local growth fund, and services are disappearing because of the lack of funding, which is a regrettable situation. We interviewed a number of people from the voluntary and community sector for the research, and, to be honest, some were quite critical of the Civil Service. They felt that the Civil Service spent a lot of time on processes and checking that money was spent in the right way. Again, I am not saying that that is not important — of course it is — but they felt that there was much less focus on outcomes. The voluntary and community sector urged the Civil Service to be much more connected to front-line delivery. They felt that civil servants were often quite detached and a bit academic in their approach rather than really thinking through delivery. Part of what is needed in the skills mix is much more interaction between civil servants and the voluntary and community sector, the business sector and other sectors. They can learn from one another, and more secondments may be one way to do that.

At the end of the previous session, there was a conversation about requiring civil servants to work outside the Civil Service in order to be promoted or advance in their career. I strongly advocate that, because you can become very insular if you operate within one Department or even just within the Civil Service, whereas you have your eyes opened when you go out and see things differently. Similarly, people from other sectors who come into the Civil Service can learn a lot from that as well.

Ms Forsythe: Definitely. It is a circle. It comes back to what you said about risk aversion. You see it from both sides, as you say, Ann.

There is a responsibility on civil servants, and they feel that through the bureaucracy involved. They answer to line management and have to cross all the t's and dot all the i's to ensure compliance and to account for where the money is going. However, the way in which they have to put that out to the voluntary and community sector creates an awful burden of work.

As an accountant, I spent a lot of time in that sector moving information around in order to show all the different funders. It was ridiculous. If a member of the public was receiving a service from the organisation, you had to show that the staff resource was this and that a third of the outcome went to this, that and the other. You were just moving data around to report back to all the Departments, and what value was there in doing that? It goes back to your recommendation on having a culture of innovation. It is about saying, "Do you know what? There's an outcome here. This organisation is doing this. Let's not get so caught up in chopping numbers around for the sake of filling out five forms a month in different formats".

Ms Watt: Clearly, the Civil Service needs to be better at valuing innovative ideas and encouraging people who come up with ideas for how things could be done differently as a result of something that they may have learnt about from a voluntary sector organisation, a business organisation or somewhere else. We need to be much more willing to change, to take those ideas on board in order to do things better and to challenge the prevailing pattern of just doing what we have done before.

Ms Forsythe: Absolutely. Thank you very much.

Mr Kingston: I want to probe what you said about people who stay in post and those who are moved around too much and do not get the time to become a specialist in a role. We want the Civil Service, like any modern institution or company, to be a dynamic organisation that deploys its human resources effectively. At one stage, you talked about the need for specialists who can be deployed to tasks and have the ability to move around. However, you also pointed to the frustration that is felt when there is too much churn. At times, there is a feeling that there is a policy of not wanting somebody to be in a post for too long and wanting to move them on, especially among those from outside the Civil Service, including the voluntary and community sector staff who get used to liaising with somebody only for that person to be moved on. There is a slight contradiction there. What is the right balance between allowing people to specialise and build up those relationships and being dynamic and deploying your human resources well?

Ms Watt: I will start on that one. There is a need for the Civil Service to think more about using project teams rather than having people in permanent roles. The Northern Ireland Civil Service is still very much set up with people in functional teams, and those roles largely stay the same. They will evolve over time, but they do so slowly. I wonder whether we need to make much more use of project teams whereby people may work on two or three different projects at the same time. That is more of a matrix management approach: people are deployed in a flexible and agile way to where there is a need for their skills. For example, somebody with data skills or procurement skills may work on a couple of projects for three months and then move on to another couple of projects. People are drawn in according to the project need rather than just having standing teams that largely stay the same. The NICS should definitely think more about that approach. The GB Civil Service has moved towards a project team model, and that should be encouraged.

It is important to say that specialisms are not just about bringing in new people; they can be about developing the people whom you have. That is an important aspect. It is about the ongoing training and development of existing civil servants, noting — it was in the Audit Office report, I think — the high percentage of civil servants who said that they were not getting the training and development that they needed. That was concerning as well.

Tom, do you want to add anything?

Mr Burns: There should be a difference between the churn in the Civil Service and a strategic deployment of secondments and changes in the service. From the discussions about churn that we had in our interviews, people seemed to move and move again very quickly, and there was no chance to bed in with anybody or even to build the deep specialism that we advocate. They were just being shunted to wherever there was a gap. A more strategic use of a secondment or a movement would be to figure out where someone may have previous expertise that will be more valued somewhere else and to allow them as much time as needed to exercise those skills.

Hopefully, the announcement about the, I think, 70 job families that are supposed to be coming through as an outrunning of the people strategy will develop that further so that, in a project team or a wider group, people who have certain skills and abilities can move within that family or that part of the system to better develop those skills and better develop relationships within the Civil Service and without, such as with the community and voluntary sector or with business. That should be different from a churn for the sake of churn: for example, to plug a gap. There is a lot in the Audit Office report and in other past reports about temporary vacancies and temporary promotions being used to fill those gaps. That may be what a lot of the churn is trying to fix, but a greater use of secondments should be more strategic and better focused on where people can deliver the best outcomes, rather than just where they can be moved to plug a hole.

Mr Kingston: Thank you.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): No other members have indicated that they wish to ask a question. That was extremely useful. Please keep in touch with us, particularly as the evidence evolves. If you think that there are any other things that we would find beneficial, please correspond with us, because this is an extremely wide-ranging inquiry. We appreciate your evidence, and our door is open for further evidence, particularly in written form.

Ms Watt: Right. Thank you for the invitation.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Thank you.