James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will cease on that topic. Others may wish to take it up.

I will move on to what happened in Mayo County Council. A problem that is well known by many public representatives in Ireland is that local authorities, in many ways, are untouchable when it comes to malpractice and wrongdoing. What happened in Mayo was particularly poor and potentially bordered on fraud, where money was allocated that was not used for its intended purpose. I commend the Department on identifying that error. On the process of actually discovering it, how did it come to the Department's attention originally? Was it just doing a spot check? Were checks being doing routinely throughout the country and this information was brought to light?

Did somebody let Ms Hurley know that something had gone wrong in Mayo?