Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

When we talk about sanction, we are talking about approval. It is not a sanction in the sense of being a penalty. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has to sanction all expenditure or give a delegated sanction to Departments to allow them to spend moneys. The same applies to the HEA in respect of certain transactions of colleges.

Going back to the more general issue, when the committee met with the HEA previously, there was a series of issues that were of concern to the committee. I indicated at that stage that we would carry out a review of the governance practice of the HEA relating to the colleges - looking at the scope of the codes, compliance with the codes and what their response would be to any infringements of the codes. That examination is under way and a report will be prepared shortly. We will go through the usual round and it will be published as a special report in due course.