Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

Okay. The legal obligation is for the Accounting Officer to submit the account by 31 March. The account was submitted by 31 March. There was no change to the account per se. That process dates back to 1866. There have been many additions to appropriation accounts since then. The statement on internal financial control has been around for approximately 20 years. It is an extremely important document, but it is not one that we completely and wholly audit. We look at it to see whether there is any information known to us in the course of the audit that would suggest there is anything wrong with the statement. My understanding is that the internal audit had started by 31 March, or at least that internal audit had been notified of the thing. We were only told about it on 31 May.

When the statement on internal financial control came to us, signed by the Accounting Officer with a date of 31 March, there was no reference to the internal audit in it. We pointed out that there should be such a reference because it was so significant.