Mr. Brendan Rogers:

There is a job of work to be. There was palpable anger in the division and the Department and with the Tánaiste and Minister of State over this, because of the damage it has done to the reputation of the aid programme, particularly in view of the current circumstances here and the incredible generosity of people over generations and their continuing generosity despite the downturn.

We must examine all our systems in all of our programme countries now. I have already sent a message out to all of our ambassadors and all of our heads of development informing them that in view of this I want them to interrogate their systems, check they are fit for purpose and examine what auditing and valuation are being done. This message has gone out in the past few days. Also, over the past 18 months, we have been working with all of our programme countries on carrying out a public financial management assessment. As I mentioned earlier, we looked at what the World Bank, the IMF and DFID have done. Now we want to look at ourselves and had been looking at our programme countries over the past 18 months. About four weeks ago we had just got to Uganda to have a look at its systems. We will now have to interrogate all of our systems. We must put our hands up and look at them all again. We are going to do that.

I am hopeful and reasonably confident that we will not see anything like this elsewhere. Nothing like this has happened to donors previously. However, we must check. We must be clear and transparent on this rather than be defensive on it. We will do that. With regard to the timescale for repayment. I went out to Uganda as soon as we suspended our aid and spoke to the Ministers. We have a written commitment - I do not think other donors have this yet - from the Government of Uganda that it will restore the money. That is a sovereign agreement between two nations. Of course Uganda has budgetary systems and parliamentary oversight. It has yearly budgeting. We will work with them to get that money back as soon as possible. In the meantime, nothing moves. Therefore, the timescale is as soon as possible. However, we are reasonable on that. We want to get the money back and want to use it for the purpose for which it was intended. The Tánaiste and the Minister of State will have to take the decisions on that. We have the €16 million. We kept to our word and took that back and the Tánaiste and Minister of State will decide what to do with it.

The negative publicity is very dispiriting. The people of Ireland have been incredibly generous. They are incredibly generous during emergencies and were incredibly generous during the tsunami, when we had one of the highest rates of personal contributions in the world. They were incredibly generous towards Haiti. When we have polled people, they have been very supportive of the programme. However, in the current environment, when they see €4 million going missing and are aware of what the situation here at home, the reaction is of course negative. We need to assure them of what is happening to their money. Over the past few years there has been much more openness and transparency about the good work being done. When Irish people are asked whether we should support that work, they say "Yes". Of course they say misappropriation such as this is appalling, wrong and criminal and this affects their attitude negatively. Therefore, we must all work together on this over the coming years. That is why we are so angry.