Mr. Paul O'Toole:

For the further education and training portion of their budgets, SOLAS grant-aided them €538 million. The process we engage in is that we agree an opening envelope of funding by working out an estimate from our own processes. We ask each ETB to develop a plan around that and we work iteratively and, I have to say, constructively with each board on the preparation of those plans. The funding envelope for each ETB is formally approved by our board. In May, September and at the end of the year, we receive returns from the ETBs regarding in-year progress. These outline their activities, the courses they have been running and the value for money they achieve. We make adjustments in-year to each of their allocations based on how the year unfolds. At the end of the year, each ETB provides a balancing statement for its further education and training expenditure. Each board outlines each programme and all the boards give us funding reconciliations in respect of those figures. We use these to determine the final allocation for the year, that is, any adjustments, moneys to be handed back or whatever. We then get a declaration from each ETB, signed by its chief executive and finance officer, confirming that the funds have been spent in the manner that has been suggested. We do not close the book on this until we receive the financial statements.

As an exercise, we carried out a comparison regarding our end-of-year positions for 2015. At this point, we have 12 sets of certified accounts for ETBs for 2015 and we have four sets of draft accounts. The numbers are clocking up. We do not close the book finally until the financial statements have been received. We do a lot of preliminary work so that any adjustments at the end should be minor. If we have to do further adjustments, we will.