Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:

These were cases where schools used funds for purposes other than those for which they were intended. Other typical fraud issues would have been where schools might have over returned the number of pupils which caused an over-allocation of teachers and so on. We have taken two major steps in this regard, the first was to put in place a primary pupil database as well as a post-primary pupil database so that no more than one school can claim for one individual. Every child has a personal public service, PPS, number which minimises the chance of overpayment for capitation or over allocation of teachers. The second is to enhance the audit arrangements for schools and we are commencing a financial services support unit for the primary sector to enable it to have a support service to help in its financial provisions and eventually to put in random audits of primary schools. We are taking extensive steps to ensure that the frauds do not occur.