Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail)

I will answer those and the Chair can come back. I think he is right about contextualising it.

The Chair said that the enrichment of individuals "increased a lot of the tensions" in local communities. He is entitled to have that view but my own view is that because of the numbers that were coming in - we saw 45,000 international protection applicants coming in - those numbers were necessarily going to result in people making profits. Commercial providers are in the business of trying to make profit. We did not have State accommodation to accommodate the 45,000 people. We went around. I have no doubt that because of the inflated numbers, inflated prices were probably paid but even if we had the most efficient system that operated at the time under no pressure, individuals and companies were still going to make money out of this. We cannot get away from that. Even if I managed to introduce all the efficiencies I wanted to, these companies the Chair is talking about are still going to make money because they are in the business of profit. My job is to try to make sure that the taxpayer and the State gets value for money.

On the average at present, an average is a difficult thing because a lot of the contracts were entered into one, two or three years ago.