Mr. Stephen Mulvany:

No, it is not. This is compensation which was believed to be due to suppliers in respect of the period from March 2013 to the end of 2014, so it is part of the overall prompt payments legislation. As the Comptroller and Auditor General's report states, we had taken advice on that which, as far as we are concerned, indicated that we were complying with legislation by not automatically paying that compensation payment to the supplier. The Comptroller and Auditor General made us aware of the views of the Attorney General. Obviously, we do not have the Attorney General's advice, nor would it necessarily be appropriate that we would or any questions the Attorney General was asked, but based on the engagement with the Comptroller and Auditor General we provided for that €9 million in our accounts. However, since then we have been reviewing the legal position very carefully. We have asked our legal service department to go through all the legislation back to the original prompt payments legislation, and all of the EU directive legislation, and that advice confirms to us that we are legally compliant. The legislation, in our view, confers upon the supplier an entitlement to obtain both the interest and the compensation. It does not differentiate. Unlike the earlier prompt payments legislation, this legislation is different. In reality, we automatically pay the interest. We do not wait for suppliers to seek it. We automatically pay it, which may well be beyond the legal requirement, but we do that and do not intent to change doing that. We accept the principle of seeking to avoid cash liquidity to the small and medium enterprise sector in particular, and the principle of complying with the legislation.

However, our difficulty with our current systems concerns the notion of transferring €9 million effectively to private suppliers who have an entitlement to seek it but who have not sought it. To us, that is difficult. Having carried out the legal review, which was completed recently, we have shared that with our line Department, which is the Department of Health, and we are also engaging with the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, which owns this piece of legislation.