Ms Angela Kerins:

Each company has its own board. In respect of corporate governance, if one is on the board of a company, one must work in the interest of that organisation. We comply with all of the necessary company laws in respect of that. It is irrelevant as to whether one is a not-for-profit or commercial entity. It makes no difference. One has to behave and work in the interests of that organisation.

There are always competing issues from a group perspective. I return to this double bottom line. While one might like to make a commercial decision to shut down something that is not commercial, particularly in the employment of people with disabilities, we have to factor in that we will not do this and we are doing this now. In our social enterprises we want to create as many jobs as possible, which is not necessarily the focus of a commercial company. The focus of a commercial company is to make as much profit as possible, but our focus and that of social enterprise is on job creation and maintenance. Our mission overrides our margin many times. We support employment opportunities, particularly for people with disabilities but also for those with other disadvantages, whereas a normal commercial company would not stay with it. This has proved to be a good strategy because we have been able to change the work activities or product lines in organisations to preserve jobs, which is very important for us. We are the largest employer of people with disabilities.