Mr. Ciarán Breen:

They rarely arise because they run counter to all open disclosure provisions that we espouse and advocate, but there are occasions when do they arise. I will take the committee through them.

First is mediation, a process to which both parties must agree. Independent of the State Claims Agency and the plaintiff, an intrinsic part of the process is that all that happens at the mediation is confidential so that when the parties of the mediation fail and they must go to court, they will not use anything that happened at the mediation. It is not imposed by us. Rather, it is imposed on us and the other party by the mediator. However, if a settlement is reached at mediation in cases that we are involved in, we never insist on confidentiality regarding the settlement amount or anything like that.