Mr. Nicholas Jermyn:

As the chairman said in his opening remarks, we have always believed we were in compliance with the Government pay policy. The remuneration paid to the three senior executives relates to work they undertook in the private sector. In this regard we have always believed that we were compliant. We had to seek legal advice; we did seek legal advice and then in the public interest we realised we needed to ensure that we co-operated. The Deputy has referred to that. We have said that the HSE requested that the St. Vincent’s Healthcare Group supply this information to the committee. As I said, we had to check and we decided that we would forego the legal advice in the interests of the public. Because we were compliant, we thought we were compliant and we wanted to work with everybody, we decided to disclose the information.