Mr. Brian Kealy:

We understood the situation. In 2012 the country was in a far more challenging financial position, but I do not know whether that was a contributory factor. Subsequently, there have been a number of cases in which public bodies paid a large amount of taxpayers' money, for example, that of Priory Hall. I accept that it is in a different sphere, but it still involves a large amount of taxpayers' money to deal with a safety related issue where there was a failing by public sector officials. On that basis, we sought some contribution towards the future training costs of the students. We understood it might have to be on an ex gratiabasis, because we believed that had it not been for the way matters had played out, PTC would have been closed down much earlier and that we would have lost far less money. As it was a commercial organisation, we accept that we will not get everything back, but we thought there might be some compensation. A big deal was made about the fact that the flights back to Ireland were paid for, but there was not a lot of money involved across all of the students.