Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

If I can make one or two other comments, I will go back to the idea of when the account was established. One point that is worth noting is that it was established in 1998 when a cheque issued from the OHM in the amount of £25,000. The bank account was established to receive that funding. However, it is interesting that it was established with a title called the health and local authority levy fund account. Clearly, it was anticipated at that stage that there might be funding from other sources or that it would be used for these purposes. I wish to draw attention to this point, that there obviously was some understanding of this being used in the short or long term and that there might be funding from multiple sources. I think what happened subsequently was that the amount of funding that was provided probably exceeded anyone's expectation and I do not really wish to speculate as to what were people's intentions. One thing which I think is significant and which may be relevant is the amount of money that accumulated in the fund over the years. A significant amount of the payments were made at year-end. Had the payments not been made at year-end, they would have had to have been surrendered by the funding bodies. Again, it probably is speculative to make this point but it may be that people felt they were doing good work in the partnership sphere and that they wanted to be able to continue that good work and to have the funding available. However, it probably would be better if individuals who were involved in that kind of decision-making were asked to give an account.