John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I understand the explanation from the other side of the argument. Collusion, fraud, theft or anything one wishes to describe, happens in business. It happens everywhere and whatever is the enterprise, it takes the appropriate steps at the various levels within the organisation to anticipate what might happen. Regardless of whether it is in a shop where someone has taken stuff off the shelves, where there is pilferage of one kind or another in a business or where someone simply is putting his or her hand into one's till, one will anticipate it and will try to do something about it. One puts in cameras, or has officers in place to deal with it. Given the substantial amount of money the NTMA handles and manages, as a non-qualified person looking in I simply would have expected, by way of either contract or oversight, to have seen something better from the organisation. It has been a learning curve for me that all of this could have happened, particularly when such vast sums of money are involved. Moreover, as others from outside Mr. Corrigan's organisation were involved, from a public accounts point of view, I expect greater oversight of all this for the future, because that is all we can do now. I encourage Mr. Corrigan to seek the full report and to make efforts with the Financial Services Authority, FSA, in respect of that investigation.

I will now turn to a paragraph from the earlier remarks of the Comptroller and Auditor General in which I was interested. When dealing with contributions to the pensions fund, he noted a total of €1 billion was repaid from the fund to the Exchequer. Is the Exchequer where the money came from in the first place?