Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

I make a distinction between claims made by the chief executive and the authorisation of expenditure on behalf of the VEC where, effectively, the chief executive is fully empowered to authorise any payment that is lawful and proper. One would not expect that anybody would oversee an authorisation of payment by the chief executive for, let us say, payment to a supplier. He or she is the chief officer and that would be normal.

They would obviously be subject to subsequent checking by, let us say, an internal audit or if my office carries out an audit. In the normal way, if there is a supply of service-----