Mr. Kevin Cardiff:

The reason is simple enough. We are supposed to audit approximately €140 billion of European funding each year. We have increased considerably the number of special reports we carry out but we cannot handle more than approximately 30 a year. The more recent output is something between 25 and 35. Six years ago, it was closer to 15 or 20. Each audit takes about 13 months from inception to finalisation. There are so many different European spending programmes that coming back to them, even the larger ones, more than once every ten years is quite difficult. In recent times we have considered trying to look a little more strategically at the overall systems. This is precisely the report about which Mr. Wojciechowski spoke. We have stepped back a little and looked at the way in which this RDP, as a whole, is managed. The messages from that apply then pretty much to all the programmes, not just to certain specific ones. In truth, too, although the Leader programme has changed a lot in Ireland, it probably has not changed as much Europe-wide because there was a pretty basic reform more or less in the year or so after that report was published. We typically try to find a European-wide perspective rather than a specifically national perspective. We do not have the resources to go to every country and do that, but-----