Mr. Stephen Mulvany:

Agreed. As I said, our intent is to get this paid. The HSE does not want to hold this money. Our preference would have been to have got to it earlier. In terms of the amount, in December 2004, the long-stay charges or contribution of the time were suspended, in what eventually became the repayment scheme issue. Over the 29 years from 1976 until then, the average interest across all these accounts - remember there are about 18,000 to 20,000 accounts - was less than €1 million per year. As soon as the charge was suspended in December 2004, patients no longer were making contributions to the cost of their care and the value of money in their accounts went up significantly. Part of our response was to try to reduce any risk, by bringing money from the local centres into a central point where we could better manage it and give better support to the 170 local centres. To do something well across 170 centres with all the complexities, particularly when we are talking about deceased patients and probate - it is much better to do the complex stuff centrally. We established a system in that central unit that gives interest to the accounts automatically when it is earned. It is a very robust system and is separate from the HSE's accounts. This is a legacy issue which has taken us longer than we would like to sort out, that is, to give the four years' worth of interest, which is in the region of €12.5 million, to those patients.

Prior to 2005, health boards were mainly not returning interest. They had a different legal relationship. In the few years up to that date, a number of health boards in the west had retained interest. That is the €2 million figure. Based on what we learn from completing the 2005-08 interest payment, we will have to make a decision, one that will undoubtedly involve engagement with the Department, on whether to pay the interest dating from the earlier period. If the decision is "No", the money will not be retained by the HSE.