Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

It is important to recognise that when a general purposes grant is provided, it is taken into the funding of the organisation. The income is recognised. The spending of it thereafter is not linked with specific purposes. We have the same issue with general purpose grants provided for local authorities. The State needs to ensure such income is recognised in the financial statements, but it cannot identify what that specific amount of money is spent on thereafter because it is pooled by the body in question with the other resources available to it.