Dr. Geraldine Smith:

Any auditors auditing financial statements are auditing against generally accepted accounting principles as issued by the Financial Reporting Council. They also audit to international auditing standards. The Financial Reporting Council has issued what is known as a financial regulation on how a company accounts for retirement benefits. This is all in the interests of disclosure and transparency and sets out that the organisation must detail instances of the pension fund and liabilities in the future. The idea is that an organisation recognises its charge each year for those people who will become pensioners. St. Vincent’s and many section 38 agencies, as we saw earlier today, are members of State sector pension schemes which are, to put it in very general language, pay-as-you-go. There is no fund. The accounts of those organisations do not identify the charge for the year for the employees because it is funded on a pay-as-you-go-basis. We had that discussion with the Mater. It is quite a technical issue. I would not read anything into it in respect of St. Vincent’s because that appears in various accounts and auditors will flag it up.