Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

Obviously we do not examine every procurement every year. That is not feasible. There was a procurement competition in relation to this, as I understand it, and our approach would have been focused on whether there was a competitive procurement. We would not routinely examine the business case for every individual procurement. That would not be feasible realistically. As I understand it, expenditure did continue in succeeding years in relation to the maintenance and my understanding is that it is of the order of €40,000 to €50,000 a year. The difficulty that strikes me in relation to this is that there is an accepted use for the equipment in recording emergency calls. There is almost a cynical economic way of looking at it - that using the equipment for another purpose should be adding value, but obviously not if the purpose is not within the law.