Dr. Michelle Norris:

I wish to respond to Senator Keane's questions about the €20 million dividend we delivered to the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government this year. The agency funds itself by raising loan finance on bond markets. That was traditionally how we funded ourselves when the bond markets would have us. In recent years, the agency has been funded by part of the EU-IMF emergency loan to the Government because we were shut out of the bond markets as well as the Sovereign. The IMF-EU emergency loan facility enabled us to re-finance our existing borrowings at much lower rates. This was why we were able to generate a dividend on what, I am loth to say, was a one-off basis - I am unsure whether we ever generated a dividend before.