Mr. Gerry Egan:

It is worth making the point also that the way the pension legislation operates there is a requirement on every company to have a plan in place to address the pension funding deficit. As things stand, we have a plan which has been agreed and approved by the Pensions Board as to how the deficit in our scheme is going to be closed. We are working on the implementation of that plan as we speak. It is not as if we have this significant deficit and no plan to deal with that. That is a current topic in the discussions we are having with NewERA as part of that.

In the course of today’s meeting, NewERA has been referred to many times. Perhaps the Chairman could give us some guidance as to the level of understanding at committee level of the respective roles of the Department, NewERA and Coillte. We would be happy to elaborate on that if there is not much knowledge about the issue.