Mr. Barry O'Brien:

Yes. He made reference to a fee being charged by the Mater Hospital to the CRC. Mr. Kiely said that was correct and that he had on numerous occasions made efforts to cease the practice. Mr. Kiely was the chief executive of the CRC when the documentation was written between the Department and the Mater to agree to have 180 people from the CRC brought into the voluntary hospital superannuation scheme. What I said was that I was astonished that Mr. Kiely was claiming that there was a fee being charged by the Mater. I said that I found it more astonishing that if this was the case then why had Mr. Kiely, in his role as a board member and board secretary, not raised the issue with Mr. Conlan, who was then chief executive of the Mater and also a board member of the CRC. My view was that surely he could have been in a position to give a direct reply to Mr. Kiely on why the Mater was putting in such a charge. In fact, I was clear on how the pension scheme operates. I undertook, for the members of this committee, to bring a pensions manager today. Mr. Seán Keane, beside me, is a senior pensions manager with us.

In essence, I was surprised that Mr. Kiely was claiming that this was something extraordinary which no one had ever twigged before. We all know now that if we leave out the word "fee", it is clearly set out, historically, in 1979, reconfirmed in 2004 and reconfirmed again in 2010 that this liability was agreed and signed off. In fairness to Ms. Day, she has just confirmed to Deputy Ross that she will forward the legal agreement which sets this out.