Mr. Tony O'Brien:

I am looking at the funding given and the decisions that were made year on year in respect of this organisation versus others. This is an organisation that was being funded, it appears, at an appropriate level. If I were to look at what the directors of the service provider said in their own annual financial statements - in this case, relating to the year ended 2013 - they point out that: "The deterioration in results reflects the reduction in HSE funding (as a result of general cuts to the health service budget under the Government's economic recovery programme and the temporary increase in staff costs which were not funded by the HSE)." In other words, they acknowledge the context in which financial decisions were being made which affected them and other service providers. I suspect everyone who suffered those cuts regarded them as unfair. My examination was to determine whether they appeared to be applied in a reasonable and fair way across comparable organisations.