Mr. Martin D. Shanahan:

I will not respond to the comments made in the article directly but to the Deputy's queries. As I made clear earlier in my responses to Deputy Dowds, Forfás receives funding with 78%, which was €40 million in 2012, to pay pensions. It is not a discretionary activity. We pay pensions and we receive money to pay pensions but that may look a little unbalanced to an uninformed commentator. However, it is worth repeating that we manage and administer the pension fund on behalf of Enterprise Ireland, Science Foundation Ireland, IDA Ireland, An Bord Tráchtála, the Institute for Industrial Research and Standards, the National Board for Science and Technology, Eolas and all of the retirees from those former agencies. I am talking about an accumulated pension liability and the pension payments related to retirees from all of those former bodies. That skews the accounts in terms of balancing them. It is not a discretionary activity and that is why we receive funding.