Mr. Tony O'Brien:

That is completely and utterly wrong and I will explain to the Deputy why in order to convince her that the preliminary conclusion she has reached is wrong. First, the matters that arose and were identified by internal audit were brought to the Garda bureau of fraud investigation in February 2016. Second, while we are satisfied that while the agreement continued we had been obtaining value for money, we were concerned to ensure by one means or another - and we now know what that other means is - these services would continue to be available to clients, which must be a primary concern of ours. The only reason we had to go through the sequential steps is because that is the appropriate process for bringing an internal audit to conclusion. I give an example of how the Comptroller and Auditor General or any auditor conducts his or her work. They reach preliminary findings and give the person against whom the findings are made an opportunity to comment and that is the normal process. When this came to the national director of mental health, her concern was to ensure that this audit report and her ability to act on it were not in any way compromised. She had to follow appropriate procedure and give the organisation, with all that we know about it, an opportunity to make submissions to her before she reached her final decision. That final decision, undoubtedly, would have been to withdraw funding from this organisation and to move services elsewhere. That is something that was already well under consideration long before "Prime Time". Just to be clear, without the internal audit, there would have been no "Prime Time" programme. So, there is absolutely no foundation for suggesting that we were sitting back and saying "Oh, we are getting great value for money; we will let Console continue". There is not one single shred of evidence to support that contention.