Ms Josephine Feehily:

Were I to ask them, I am sure that my colleagues on that particular committee certainly would stand over that statement in the following sense. The quality of the engagement with the people from the ICT side and the modernisation programme has improved dramatically in the last year or so. It was unvarnished in the sense of admitting what they were not doing, admitting the inadequacy of their technology and admitting to us things that were not complete. The Deputy might recall that in an earlier report, we had to identify the fact that we were effectively being sold a pup and had projects marked as complete that were not even begun. It is against that background that we were commenting on a frankness that has emerged in respect of the technology. It was not a discussion about procurement or budgets. As I have said, we are not in that space because other actors in the system are. It was an unvarnished presentation by them.

There was also an acceptance of something. The Deputy mentioned in his remarks the question of who takes decisions about spending. This is also in our report, if not the latest one then the one before it. The authority believes there has not been a dynamic prioritisation of a proper documented process to say why project X was chosen over project Y. We are getting some traction on that now. It is in that context that we talk about an unvarnished acceptance. The Deputy has the advantage over me as he has the report in front of him. It is an honesty and a robustness in the engagement that we found refreshing. That is the context in which that remark was made.