Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There are two other issues. We got the organisation's financial statements in the Oireachtas. It did not do very much. It had a very limited number of transactions and a very limited number of loans to a very limited number of organisations. There were a couple of big transactions. When we asked about the employee numbers, it was said to us that employee data are gathered in two ways, depending on the kind of grant or loan the business avails of. It is said that, by and large, employee data are gathered at the stage when a business is eligible to make an application. It is just the total number of employees in the organisation that is obtained when an application form is received.

Maybe we will hold over the question of whether we want to discuss with the organisation the number of loans it has given and the number of recipient companies. The applications probably pertained to particular projects in particular companies. It is a question of how many employees were going to be employed or retained in respect of the projects specifically funded by the loans. That is all we want. We all understand that. IDA Ireland will quote the same figures, as will Enterprise Ireland and all Departments. One would believe there were about 6 million people working in Ireland if one added up all these figures.