Ms Hilary Murphy-Fagan:

The governance structures that we had in place were the right structures but the terms of reference were mainly advisory rather than decision-making in nature. As a result, there was a lack of authority in the context of making decisions. This allowed issues relating to design and standardisation to remain open rather than be closed off. We did not recognise that issue early on but once it was identified, we quickly moved to address it. As a result, we have appointed a senior user - the head of Government accounting - and that individual is the person tasked. Although we now have a design that is locked down so that this matter does not arise anymore, if we were to have another consideration on an element of design that needed to be standardised across all Departments, the senior user, the finance officers and ourselves would come together and a single decision would be taken.

We would not allow it to continue to churn, which was part of the problem. That is why the governance structures were quite important.