Mr. Brian Kavanagh:

The board has started a programme of governance training on an annual basis. It had a half-day session on the new code of governance, which was published in September. It was given by our retained lawyers at no cost. That was part of the agreement with William Fry when it was successful in the tender for legal services. It was agreed it would provide a certain number of services free of charge. This is one of them of which the board availed.

We had a board meeting yesterday and the board discussed the structure of committees and sub-boards or boards of subsidiary companies, and it has asked the executive to come back to the next board meeting with a paper and a series of recommendations in that area with a view to clarifying terms of reference of all these committees and updating terms of reference. There are some new committees as a result of the legislation that was enacted last year. The board is also committed to taking annual corporate governance training. Ms Eade can fill members in a little more on the detail of that.

In accordance with the new code, the board has committed to full compliance in all aspects. One of the outcomes of that is that our audit committee has now become an audit and risk committee. It is chaired by a former Secretary General of the Department responsible for sport. It involves three externals and three non-executive directors. It will meet five times per year, rather than four, as was the case up to now. The internal audit function - I hope this does not sound like a contradiction - is outsourced to an external audit firm, Capita, that carries out a programme of audit work during the year. The area of governance is commanding a lot of the board's attention and it takes it seriously. There have been two new ministerial appointments to the board. They are strongly focused on that area also.