Mr. Adrian Neilan:

Fuel cards are provided to a significant number of people who travel around to provide stewarding services for the industry. That accounted for €65,000. We want to track fuel usage. A fuel card system is in place to facilitate that. We test 6,000 samples a year at our nationally accredited laboratory in Limerick. An outside company supplies specific testing of that equipment at a cost of €5,000. The company in question, Agilent, is a unique supplier. We accept the Comptroller and Auditor General's view that we need to see whether we can get somebody else to do it. However, it is very specific to the company. Another €18,000 was accounted for by IT costs. Just one IT company in Ireland, EPiServer, looks after this web server domain. Effectively, they were only available in Northern Ireland. We consulted other parties, including Barracuda in London, but we did not feel they were interested in our business. We recognised what went on. We put a new procurement officer in place.

I want to mention another thing that is important in the context of where this industry is going. We started a procurement cycle in 2011 for the streaming of our race pictures. As we worked through that tender, our overall strategy evolved. We wanted to see our pictures transmitted all over the world as cost-effectively as possible. We wanted to move from a satellite-based technology to an IP-based technology, which effectively involves putting pictures over pipes. That procurement cycle took longer than planned. We were advised by Achilles Procurement to make sure we went through it properly. In that year, there was €75,000 of activity. We were trying to get procurement in place and get people on a firm footing. While we were working through that process, some activities fell outside the cycle.

I want to emphasise that we are absolutely and completely focused on cost control. We have demonstrated that through our figures and the surplus we have generated. I would not want to come before the committee this morning if I had serious procurement issues, if I was making a serious loss, if I was demanding a subvention or if my costs were out of control. That is not the case. We are in control of our business. We accepted a direction from the Comptroller and Auditor General. We hired a procurement officer straight away. We will deliver on that.