Ms Suzanne Campion:

The review the Deputy is talking about, which recommended the refund or, rather, that IFI might think about refunding a proportion of the €30,000, looked at grants to IFI to the amount of €924,000. The organisation was privileged to have dormant accounts funding to work with. We deeply regret that there are any queries around it at all. However, as it stands, the review looked at all the money that was given to us. It included the various programmes and measures that were in place in those two years, 2019 and 2020. In effect, the €924,000 is about 75% to 78% of the total amount of grants that were given to us. The bit that was not looked at was the following year.

The funding was broken down to various programmes such as Go Fishing Week, the angling for all grants and novice angler activation. The review looked at all amounts of money over €5,000 that were disbursed to third parties. It found these particular payments. IFI had a rationale for actually including them in it, if one considers what the programmes are about. Leave No Trace is about bringing people into the environment and educating them to ensure they leave no trace behind them. The visitor safety in the countryside programme looked at keeping all those people we were intending to bring out safe in the countryside. We were dealing with the Dormant Accounts Fund target groups, namely, the disadvantaged, the educationally disadvantaged and people with a disability.