Mr. Kieran Mulvey:

No. What I am saying is that we have to take on board the issues that might arise in any organisation we fund on the basis of accounting for whatever appropriate issues, fiscal or corporate, arise for us in the conduct of that organisation. Once any such issue is brought to our attention or we raise it with the organisation, we have to be very mindful of our statutory powers and how far we can push the button in bringing the organisation along. If we get pushed back by the organisations, we have to engage in dialogue with them. If we are not listened to in this regard, we have to threaten their funding; that is our only sanction. Where this arose in the recent past, it is precisely what we did. With the IABA and the OCI, we took the measures immediately. What we are trying to do now with the OCI is on foot of the reforms it has announced and is trying implement. They are difficult to implement. As Ms Keane indicated, the council has its own legal requirements to be fulfilled. We want to help to move towards that. We want to give the organisation the money. We would like to give it the money we are withholding but a stricture is put upon us not to do that.

As I said in my introductory remarks, we are already almost half way to Tokyo. The athletes have no sponsors at the moment and there is no kit. Nobody is sponsoring the kit. As I indicated, we need funding to commit to our athletes. These are the issues we are concentrating on, in addition to the issue quite rightly raised by the Deputy. We are going to have to observe governance further and fast-track it as best we can with the resources we have. As Mr. Treacy indicated, that is what we are trying to do, through various mechanisms. Many of the organisations are voluntary. Some have very few head office staff. They might have one or two. They all have to conform to the same standard, however.

The other issue is that we have to bring the organisations to where we need to bring them and to where the State requires them to be. That is an ongoing exercise. We have to help them to get to this point. In some organisations, there are individuals who have been in place for a period and who see their organisation as their bailiwick - we have been through this in the charity sector - and whose organisations have their own rules and regulations and do not see what is wrong with what they are doing. We have to assist them in understanding that new standards are now required, in addition to new transparency. We are in a different period and there are fiscal proprietary requirements that are necessary, as there are for directors, companies, federations and organisations under the Companies Act 2014. The committee's hearings and the report of Mr. Justice Moran will give us more ammunition and assistance to point out the importance, efficacy and necessity of this in a system of sports support that was not in existence in the past. It is a road we are on.