Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

The pattern of large increases which the Deputy noticed is not exclusive to Bord na gCon. It has happened in many financial statements in 2012. I mentioned earlier that I am looking at the assumptions on this and I expect to report on them. It is problematic that there are different assumptions being used by different organisations for what are ostensibly the same things, but also the swing in values that comes as a result of changes such as the change in discount rates. That has had very substantial impacts. Basically, this reflects the yield on long-term government bonds, which has dropped in 2012. I do not wish to give a definitive view on it, but I certainly share the Deputy's concerns about the variability from year to year, and also about the inconsistency in the different sets of financial statements.