I am reluctant to interrupt the ministerial nostalgia but I would like to ask the Minister about this percentage of staff. How many of them were retrained? Were they appointed to the office by way of transfer or were they new recruits? To make matters easy, let me ask the Minister if he will agree there is a case for a submission to the Office of Public Works from his Department and from him as Minister calling attention to the disgraceful lack of facilities for the public as Deputy Rabbitte's question has elicited?

With regard to the first part of Deputy Higgins's supplementary question, staff were transferred to the Passport Office from other parts of the Department and they are still there. Not alone were additional staff brought in, bringing the total figure up by 15 per cent to a total of 120, but long overtime hours were worked in an effort to reach the very high turnover figure we succeeded in reaching, that was a passport in, on average, seven days. I think the people involved are to be complimented on that.

With regard to the other part of the Deputy's question, we have already been in touch with the Office of Public Works to see how best we can be advised to deal with that problem.