Mr. Francis Doherty:

In agreeing to take on properties from homeless services, my predecessor's strategy seemed to be that it was important to just secure the opportunity, grow the number of beds the organisation was providing, get the properties in and find a way thereafter to fund the purchases. If there was no money available from the trust's unrestricted funds, then it was a case of going back to the local authorities, the DRHE or the Department of housing and saying, "We did this. We have delivered the beds and now we need extra money because it cost us more than we told you at the start." That is how it happened on numerous occasions over several years. I had been trying to tidy up a number of those with the support of officials in the Department of housing before becoming CEO. There is some reference in the C and AG's report to the effect that this seemed to be part of the process of the bailout, but that was a separate thing happening at the time anyway in respect of homeless services, the buildings being bought and the fact the trust kept going back to ask for additional money.