Mr. Mark Griffin:

Bear in mind that at the time, in 2006, as the whistleblower allegations were being assessed, they were assessed by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment, which gave an unequivocal guarantee to my Department that all the paperwork was in order, that all the payment claims that were processed were based on appropriate documentation and that in so far as DETI concluded, the issues that arose were an internal dispute among directors of the company concerned. We accepted those assurances. As I stated earlier, perhaps at the time we should have been more hands-on at this particular juncture. As to whether this would have led to a different outcome, I cannot say because I imagine that in our engagement with the whistleblower, we perhaps would have relied again to a significant extent on DETI, which had day-to-day responsibility for the management of payment claims, along with Western Connect, on this particular project.