Mr. Tom Boland:

Yes, it did not come to our attention except to the extent that I will clarify now. We took over responsibility for the institutes of technology in 2007. The arrangement in relation to these companies had been in existence since the early 1990s. We took at face value in the first couple of years the assurance by the institute that they were separate independent companies. It is only in the context of the issues around the consolidation of the accounts of these companies, an issue recommended by the Comptroller and Auditor General, that we as the HEA became concerned about the governance arrangements that were in place in the context of the transfer of significant resources of the institute to what were, we were assured, independent bodies. That raised alarm bells. We then explored the issues over the next couple of years.