Mr. Keith Poole:

She declared her interest to the main board in November 2009. The Deputy asked me for some context and I wanted to give that to the committee. The particular business in Kilkenny – I do not know if the Chairman is familiar with our location in Kilkenny – lost €146,000 in 2007. In 2008 it lost €165,000. In 2009 it lost €346,000. This is in our social enterprise. In 2009 it had 29 employees, 17 of whom were people with a disability. The issue was to try to replace income.

I was not personally involved in sourcing coffins or anything to do with coffins, there was a priority to try to do something to save these jobs in Kilkenny. That was the issue that drove this. With the 20:20 vision of hindsight, one would not have done what we did but we were desperate to get something into that centre that would generate some money. That is when the coffin idea emerged.