Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It took 18 minutes to answer what I would consider to be the simplest, most basic and most obvious question, namely, how much does the Department pay to the ETB sector?

I will now call on Mr. Paul O'Toole, chief executive of SOLAS, to make a short opening statement and we will then go straight to Deputy MacSharry for questions. I am sorry it has taken 18 minutes to get our first question answered here today. It is obvious that the way in which the accounts are presented is not user-friendly. As Accounting Officer, it must be very difficult for Mr. Ó Foghlú to account for all of this, given that the accounts are difficult to work out. We will now move on to the rest of the meeting. I just needed to get that information onto the public record before proceeding any further because it was not made available or even referred to in any of the opening statements.

I again call on Mr. O'Toole.