Mr. John Barrett:

That is a significant period from 2 July to the period in September. By September, I had serious reservations as to whether genuine progress was being made on these matters. I reflected on it in the context of the Fennelly report.

The committee members have my documents before them. The section that deals in particular with this has the heading "A Critical Inflection Point". It pertains to the meeting in the college on the 27th and the scale of the issues arising. Ultimately, I begin to deal with what Fennelly deals with by way of effective communication. We heard Mr. Howard a little earlier describe the meeting in respect of any other business and what was, in effect, non-effective communication.

I took some considerable time over writing this note. A period has elapsed since 2 July when I originally prepared a report to go to Mr. Howard through Mr. Dunne. We are reaching now into the third week of September and I have concerns that the thing is not being treated in the multi-million off-balance-sheet, as Mr. Michael Culhane described it, activity that is continuing. It is an active, ongoing enterprise within an organisation for which I have line responsibility. In setting it out very clearly, I too go through the specific issues that Fennelly raises in respect of what a section 41 is intended to do and how this applies absolutely to the matters of gravity that I dealt with in my report of 6 July. I was very deliberately putting it on the record.