Mr. Gerry Lynskey:

I will add to that point, if I may. Ten years ago there was a change in attitude by the Department. For four years or so prior to that it had co-operated very closely with a number of IT companies, including our two. There were at least four others around at the time. At that point the on-farm PC was the main technology in terms of IT. In 2002 the Department made a decision that with the onset of web-based technology and websites it could go it alone and it did so. There are arguments regarding technology that would favour that approach but I would argue that ten years ago the state of Irish broadband was such that it did not facilitate this approach and it was premature to spend a lot of money, as the Department did at that time. We looked at that area and at the idea of supplying a web-based solution, and decided it was not commercially feasible at the time because of the low level of broadband penetration. The Department went ahead and, over the following four or five years, developed a very sophisticated website which replaced, or perhaps added to, the existing technology, which was based on e-mail links between on-farm PCs and the Department's database. In a sense, by using different technology it substituted for the type of developments that had been prevalent at the turn of the millennium.