Mr. Darragh O'Loughlin:

In this particular case, exactly as the Leas-Chathaoirleach said, redundancy payments were being paid out to individuals before the corresponding funding had come in from HRI. We have a service-level agreement with HRI which captures all of this. We strengthened it, revised it and worked on it in the past year. We are working on it again, with another review before the end of this year. Under the agreement that we now have with HRI, if we were proposing any redundancies, we would have to do a business case. We would give the business case to HRI, it would approve the redundancies, assuming the business case stands up, then having approved the business case, it would then approve the funding. We will not even offer terms to our employees or the union on any potential redundancy until we have that approval from HRI on the terms of the redundancy. No payment will be made to any individual who is being made redundant until the corresponding funding has come across from HRI. We prevent the cash flow issue by getting the cash in before the cash goes out. We will get the approvals in place in writing before any steps are taken.

Regarding cash flow issues generally, we continually scan the horizon. We are quite strict about looking at what lumpy expenditure is coming up on big-ticket items. We make sure we have the money upfront in our account, from our funders, before the expenditure is incurred.