Ms Patricia Byron:

I thank the Deputy for his question.

I believe in promotion, influence, training and education. Those are rooted in my background.

I have to trot out the well-worn phrase that culture eats strategy. It always does. I go a little further on that. It is about right and wrong. Value sets make a huge difference, in particular at the board table. As a chair in many environments, I often ask where we are coming from in terms of value sets. Culture is a huge issue for us in terms of promotion with the various businesses we engage with. Last week, I had the pleasure of making a site visit in County Kilkenny to a small business that makes conveyor belts with a number of the big names. It only has 12 employees. This is a successful company, which could grow bigger but has decided not to. It makes enough money to sustain itself at a reasonable level, but still gets the big brands because of the quality coming out of the organisation. I have witnessed it and it is top class. Out of 12 staff, two are constantly looking at quality, compliance and making sure everything is done to the right level. The owners have an open door policy, which I saw. The lads on the floor can go up at any time of the day and say they do not like the look of X, Y or Z. That is culture in action.

I chair a number of audit and risk committees. I always say that audit is about promoting and finding where we are wrong, addressing it and having a culture where someone will say they are delighted something was found because it can now be fixed and they can move on, as opposed to have what historically would have been the "Aha" moment, where somebody is buried. It is an absolute turnaround and something I have spoken about already.