Mr. Brendan Rogers:

Some of my colleagues will complement my answers. There was collusion between a senior official in the Office of the Prime Minister, senior officials in the Bank of Uganda and a senior official in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development. The Ugandan system is quite complex. One cannot take money out of the system unless there are signatures, endorsements of those signatures, the use of passwords. It is quite a sophisticated process and the Auditor General has pointed that out in his report. Our investigative team will be looking at what exactly happened. This was not an easy thing to do. It was unprecedented to have people in those three systems. Some 17 people have been interdicted, more are to be interdicted and two have been already charged, including the principal accountant in the Office of the Prime Minister. This is at a higher level than any other donor had ever anticipated before.

It took our breath away, which is the reason we had to respond quickly. There could be no "ifs" or "buts". In our joint financing arrangement with the Ugandans, we have a system in place whereby we have dialogue if something goes wrong. In this case, we decided not to avail of this dialogue because the matter was too serious and we had to halt operations immediately. That is what happened.

I met the Ugandan Minister for Finance and he was horrified by what occurred because it goes to the heart of the system when one has collusion of this type. As we speak, a new system featuring voice and fingerprint recognition is being introduced. I hope this issue will not arise again.

As part of our governments programme, we are focused totally on parliaments. When we say we are assisting through government systems, we mean everything related to governments. For instance, the assistance we provide to parliaments, auditors general and human rights commissions is considered government assistance, which is an all-inclusive term. We have been working with Parliament in Uganda for a number of years and I hope this programme, which has stopped, will continue.

On the reaction in Uganda, I was amazed to find on my return to the country after some time that Ireland and the other donor countries are dominating newspaper headlines. Our ambassador has been leading the charge with meetings with the Ugandan Prime Minister and other Ministers. Members of Parliament from northern Uganda, including Karamoja, travelled en masseto Kampala where they demanded and received a meeting with the President and met our ambassador at the Irish embassy. The issue has been addressed in Ugandan newspapers almost daily and has energised civil society. I understand people are wearing black and removing their shoes to indicate its importance.

In the 20 years I have known Uganda, I have never experienced such a cataclysm through the country's system, from top to bottom. While the Ministers to whom I spoke were in shock, they allowed this type of corruption to grow unchecked and recent developments are the result of that. This is the first time donors have been so united. Ireland has taken a lead in this matter.