Mr. Michael O'Keeffe:

No; allow me to clarify. First, when an organisation puts in an application, it must have a letter from the broadcaster. Consequently, an independent producer with a project must have a letter from the broadcaster, be it, in the case of television, RTE, TV3 or TG4. The first point is that one must have a commitment from the broadcaster that it will broadcast the finished product. We then make the offer and those concerned have 12 months in which to put everything in place and sign a contract with us. That is now the situation and we will go beyond that only in exceptional cases. The issue raised by the Comptroller and Auditor General was that in the earlier years of the scheme's operation, we allowed a little more flexibility. We now are quite strict in this regard. If there is a request to go beyond 12 months, it comes to me first, as the chief executive officer, from the Sound and Vision team, and I then refer it to the authority to make a decision. There may be genuine reasons for it. Certainly in the case of large projects, there may be reasons, as the amount we give may be a small portion of a larger amount to put together a project and there may be different reasons it has taken longer. However, if something goes up to 12 months and looks as though it is going beyond that, we now have a tracking system in place to address that.