Mr. Emmet Cotter:

I wish to advise the committee what exactly was at play here. On 24 August, the head of group human resources in CIÉ wrote to the trade union group, TUG, and I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. O'Leary on this, seeking to impose a financial cap to cover any and all actuarial or other professional advice sought by the TUG from 24 August 2017. However, the important point is that this financial cap was slightly less than the sum required for the external actuarial advice, a financial estimate of which had been communicated to CIÉ the same day by the independent actuary. Effectively, the proposed financial cap would have ensured there was no financial commitment by CIÉ to fund an independent legal opinion or any legal advice and it stymied any such opportunity. Very cleverly, it was put in the same day as the company received the estimate. I have seen the estimate for the actuarial advice and it was an amount in sterling excluding VAT, and CIÉ came back a few hours later with that same amount in euro to cover all actuarial and other professional advice. Essentially, CIÉ in the one day closed the door by ensuring that the sum that was on offer could only be used or gobbled up to pay for the preliminary actuarial advice. Mr. O'Leary has nailed that point. I am merely giving the detail of what happened.