Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

The difficulty is that, while last week the Secretary General of the Department of public expenditure was here, in none of that Department's accounts will you see a figure for the ERDF because the money comes into the accounts of the Department of Finance. There is a difficulty that if you cannot see in the financial statements where the funding is, then it is difficult to pursue from the committee's point of view. That is why I was encouraging more transparency around the drawdown. I did so in order that we would at least know what had been applied for, what was available, what had been disallowed and what had been received. My suggestion is that funds, claims and so on not being on any set of financial statements makes it difficult for the committee to pursue the matter.