Mr. Aidan O'Driscoll:

It was sheer bloody-mindedness by my colleague, Dr. Kevin Smyth, and his colleagues, some of whom have since retired, and to whom we owe a debt of gratitude. As I say, and I am not blowing smoke here, I know that colleagues in other member states and senior colleagues in the Commission were quite surprised that we did not lie down and just take our bigger hit, particularly with the 2% flat rate, but there was a very strong feeling among our own staff that this was wrong and that we had a case. Therefore, the case was fought through all the various stages that are identified in another graphic in the Comptroller and Auditor General's report, each of which steps, if the Deputy likes, I could take him through. One will see, in summary, the blow by blow we went through there as we put our first figure of €33 million on the table and we continued to engage with the Commission. Its representatives said, "Well, all right then, but what about this? What about that?", and we went off and we looked at this and we looked at that. The figure crept up and, eventually, the Commission offered this final figure of €67 million, which we could have contested again. We could have said, "No, we are going to court." That was the next step but I think that would have been very unwise for all kinds of reasons. We had got it down to a reasonable level. One has to maintain a relation with the Commission.