Ms Anne Barry:

The Department's representatives have already given evidence on a number of occasions on this issue. We have done a trawl of our records and have not found any evidence that we were involved in the arrangements and so on. Management did supply us with two documents, one dating back to 1989 which would suggest that we would have had some involvement in investment accounts and another document relating to 2008. Our view is that since the Secretary General of the Department was the Accounting Officer, the Department would have been aware of the arrangements that were put in place back in the 1990s. Of course, we were involved in the Walsh committee which led to the establishment of the college as an institute of education. We were involved in a number of project groups around the implementation of the Walsh report. Our assumption is that we were involved in the development of the arrangements but we do not have any records ourselves.