Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

And a lot of money lost. However, there are lessons to be learned here. The Deputy pursued the point about authorisations for sign-off. In a system in which assurances are given by others, who take responsibility for stating that a payment is authorised or required because the conditions have been satisfied, it would be fairly routine within many organisations for a paying officer to be at executive officer level or at higher executive officer level. The amounts they can sign off or countersign would be specified. That is what we would expect to see when we go in to an organisation and is what we routinely see and test for. If we find any situation in which we think the authorisation level is above somebody's grade, or where there is more complexity to be tested by somebody who is signing off on a payment, then we would certainly draw attention to that, and to the requirement to have a second set of eyes looking at a payment.

It is important that the administration of payments be separated from the decision to allocate funding in the first place. I do not believe it was an executive officer who made the choice to fund Bytel. That decision was made at a higher level in the two Departments. Following a decision at a higher level, and once a process has started, there should be systems to administer and make the payments. That would be routine.