Mr. Joe O'Flynn:

I have tried to explain how this occurred in my opening statement. Clearly the use of the "levy fund" title was a distraction as levy funds do not come under either oversight or control of the union itself. It is not captured in our accounts. It is not subject to internal or external audit. Clearly, the use of the title would have been an issue in respect of it not being identified as a fund of the union. Second, I genuinely believe that the practices of the funding agencies, whereby they had no service level agreement, did not seek income and expenditure statements, and the fact that there was no oversight at any stage contributed significantly to what the Deputy said was usually inappropriate use of public moneys in respect of this programme. Third, certainly it was our view throughout the entire period that the programme manager of the SKILL programme, who was a senior HSE employee, working out of the office for the SKILL programme was, at all times, overseeing and involved in the arrangements, the granting of the funding and so on. As I said in my statement, when we inquired of the fund administrator on several occasions as to the source of the funding, as to the approval of the funding and so on, we were advised that all of this was, indeed, approved and funded by the SKILL programme. We were told it had nothing to do with SIPTU, that the funding was for the projects which were part of the SKILL programme. All of that combined, obviously it operated without our knowledge. That is highly regrettable because had we been aware of such grants, which the HSE say were destined for SIPTU, we would have ensured that all of that money would, first of all, have been accounted for correctly and, secondly, spent for the purposes for which it was meant.