Mr. Nick Ashmore:

In terms of our own assurance, we review all the accounts and financial information of the on-lenders to which we are lending and to which we are on-risk. The primary bearer of the risk and responsible party for the risk is the SBCI. We then have a lines-of-defence process. We have a risk team as well that is overseeing how we do that process, what we check, and all the covenants we check. All our loan agreements have significant covenants around deployment rates, business plans, the health of the finance of the business and profitability, and we check all of those religiously on a quarterly basis. We then have our own internal audit function, which we leverage by using an outsourced firm in that context.

The audit fee for the Comptroller and Auditor General for 2016 was €27,000.