Mr. Brendan Rogers:

Uganda is a very risky place in which to work. The sum of €4 million represented phase 2; the first phase involved €3.2 million, which went where it was supposed to go. We are one of the only donors to have placed an office in Karamoja to examine the infrastructure that has been built on the ground. Our team in Kampala travels regularly to Karamoja, which is an inhospitable spot. Two or three years ago, one could travel in northern Uganda only with flak jackets and armoured personnel carriers. Now, one can walk around the area and life is coming back to the 55 districts. Northern Uganda is approximately the size of Ireland and was essentially a wasteland. Slowly but surely, we are seeing life, infrastructure and hope return to the area. Our funding and the funding of the Government has been making a difference. There is a lag between putting money in at the top and seeing what is happening on the ground. I assure members there has been an enormous change. When the members of the committee come to visit, they will see what is happening on the ground.

Should we have found out about this matter ourselves? We would have found it out eventually. When we looked back at where money was spent on the ground - when we looked at the government budget and our budget - we would have seen that the funds did not reach the area. There was a gap. However, at the top, the key organisation and institution of the Ugandan Government with responsibility for examining government systems is the auditor general, who has a team of 400 people working with him. They are highly trained and highly competent. Their capacity has been built up from the money provided by Ireland and other donors. The office of the auditor general has enormous capacity and special investigative powers. Its staff were able to go in at the top - into the office of the Prime Minister - to examine what was happening, and saw very quickly what was happening. They identified a sophisticated collusion among a number of people in different Ugandan Government departments. One could not have anticipated it.

We will have to examine our risk profiles. In the past, we looked at risk in districts, further down the line, with procurement and capacity issues. Risk was determined in respect of whether the money would reach the ground. Many of the donors working together had looked at the systems and said that, in general, they were fit for purpose. A joint assistance framework is a very sophisticated system, with donors and the government looking at the overall public financial management system. In general, they said the systems were reasonably fit for purpose. The risk for us was at the bottom.