Mr. Brendan Gleeson:

I thank the Chairman and wish members a good morning. The Chairman is absolutely right. I fully appreciate that the committee needs time to consider these things before we have the session. I can only apologise for that. The deadline for the submission for the value for money stuff was last Friday. I received a document on Friday, which was not quite complete. It listed all the value for money studies, but it did not say what proportion of the Vote was taken up by each of those. It may not have fully elaborated the actions we took on foot of those value for money studies. On balance, I felt it was better to get that partial information to the committee within the deadline and, therefore, we sent over that incomplete document as it was, but at least it showed that value for money studies are something we take seriously. We do at least two of them per year in significant expenditure areas. It is a process overseen by the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform and it is something we take very seriously. However, there is no excuse for not getting it to the committee on time. We should have sent the completed documents on Friday. I fully apologise for that.