Mr. Tony O'Brien:

I am not trying to worm my way out of anything. I have never come in here and tried to do that and I am sure the Deputy did not imply or wish to imply that I have done that. Clearly at any point in time we could have done things sooner. It is true. Whenever one conducts an internal audit, one of the questions one asks is, "Should we have done it sooner?", particularly when one finds a can of worms such as this.

However, I have to concern myself with whether the decisions the individual officers made at the time appeared reasonable in the circumstances. I believe it was reasonable in the circumstances for this audit to be triggered when it was. Yes, it might have been better if it had been triggered sooner, but all of the wrongdoing that this internal audit uncovers was not done by HSE officials; it was done by others. This was not a public body. It was a body in the public domain, raising funds from members of the public.

One of the questions I have asked myself was whether we should have potentially compromised the internal audit process by doing things sooner, which would have made it impossible to complete the internal audit, but might have had an impact on people who have, in good faith, been raising funds for Console in the last period. Our objectives were simple in this: to get this internal audit; not to allow the process to be jeopardised; and to safeguard the services. We have done those things. We could have done other things, but had we done those other things, it would probably have compromised our primary objectives.

We are not the regulator of charities. We are not the regulator of a whole range of organisations that we have some relationship with. I do not believe it is right to suggest that all of the wrongdoing that is uncovered by this report, can be attached-----