Mr. Jonathan Hill:

I am very happy to address these questions. I believe that what was said in the Oireachtas joint committee is consistent with what we have presented today. If Deputy McAuliffe gives me a few seconds, I will go through it and perhaps give some context to those emails. I recognise the redacted emails do not give full clarity on the sequence of events. This is because of legal reasons, as the chair has explained. We did look to give you context in the opening statement. I am happy to expand on this as much as I can do legally.

You will see that an email was sent to me, actually in mid-November, that came from the junior employee we are seeking to protect from a legal perspective. I want to make that clear. In that email, I am asked if I agree to a request from that junior colleague to commute holidays that the employee could not take for exceptional circumstances to a cash payment. I accept that you cannot see the words in the redacted statement but that is for legal reasons. Within that, just to explain, both the then finance director and the COO had agreed to this request already and that is referenced in the email. I too agreed to it, although that was not a formal approval as due process would need to be followed.

Within that response - I am comfortable in saying this because it does not relate to the junior employee - I added a throwaway line to the junior colleague asking can you negotiate the same for me please with a question mark and an exclamation mark. For me, it is clear that this was not a formal request. It was in an email back to the junior colleague. I copied the then finance director to the note as I had agreed with what he had done. He obviously took that line as a request and used that email chain to go to the then chair. From then on I was not part of the process, although I was asked five weeks later, as would be normal at the end of the year, how many days holiday I had taken. I replied and asked what was happening with them, saying clearly that I would be happy to carry them over. The then finance director, who was copied on that email, continued the discussion with the chair and with the other people in the emails that you see.