Mr. Feargal Ó Coigligh:

As Accounting Officer in the Department, when the scale of the loss was brought to my attention at the end of June 2024, and it was discussed by our management board in July 2024, I was faced with a situation where there was to my view a shocking loss in public expenditure. I wanted to know why. We had a situation where we could be presenting an annual report to Government with this significant loss highlighted and no explanation as to what happened. I, as Accounting Officer, had an absolute duty to discover what went wrong here. Therefore, I appointed the former head of audit in the Department to carry out an investigation with terms of reference. Those terms of reference asked for an interim report in September. However, as set out in the final report prepared by the former head of audit, she determined that it was it so complex - she had reviewed more than 500 documents and spoken to many of the people involved - that she was not in a position to provide an interim report at that stage. Therefore, I was very much of the view, and I discussed this with the Minister at the time, that if we were going to the Government to show a loss of €5.3 million in expenditure and €6.7 million on a project we had not delivered, we needed to be able to say what had happened.