Mr. Paul Lemass:

I think most of Senator Boyhan's questions related to the audit but I wish to underline that the Department sees the audit committee as a pivotal part of the governance framework, and that is why it was put on a statutory basis in 2014. The performance of the audit committee is something we take very seriously in the overall framework of governance.

With regard to the write-off issue, I can confirm that our understanding is that appendix 7 would break out the gross and the net, would highlight and report collection rates based on the net, and would also show the gross figures prior to that both for housing rents, rates and other sources of revenue. If it is helpful, we could do a note on that to clarify our understanding of it.

Rates collection is a huge issue for us. We will appear before the committee next week to discuss that in detail, so if the committee is happy, I can defer it until then.