Mr. Sean Quigley:

I know we are not going to go into individual cases. I think I understand the scenario to which the Deputy refers. We are looking at the value of those funds at the worst point in the financial crisis. As I alluded to earlier, all those funds took a hit. We have looked at a number of cases. If one looks at them over the longer term, even since December 2003, all of them are significantly up. Of course, if one looks at any long-term fund in a particular year, which is what we are looking at here, and the fund is down substantially, it is not a real loss. It is a paper loss. If one were to sell all those units at that point in time, one would trigger the loss, but that did not happen in this case. We are getting into investments where there is going to be fluctuation in the value of funds in the short term. We get into those investments, however, because we take a long-term view. That has been determined to be in the best interests of cases such as the one the Deputy has mentioned. If we were to take an approach in which we took no risk with the funds and put them into a cash-type investment, we would be criticised because the return is extremely low and would not achieve the long-term objective of growing the investment.

In terms of input, there is consultation between the wards of court office and individual beneficiaries, but, ultimately, the registrar and the courts must make a decision based on what is in the best interests of the beneficiary.