Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

To clarify, and the Accounting Officer may be able to give a view on this as well, the deductions were not resulting in cash pile-up. What was happening was the pensions payable to the individuals were reduced in quantum. There was not a deduction from what they were paid; it was just never paid to them. Therefore, cash was not building up in a suspense account that would have triggered an earlier realisation there was a problem. It is actually a very complicated calculation and I can see how the errors would have occurred. The important thing is to have systems that trigger an early detection and an early resolution.