Mr. William Beausang:

The sum of €3 million or €4 million might be allocated to us. I will not put a price on a project like this, but if we were undertaking it ourselves, it would consume a significant amount of the resources that are available to us for things like consultancy. There is, or there will be soon, a full statement of the scope of the project and the outcomes that are expected from it. I am happy to share that with the committee once it is finalised.

In terms of the cost of moving to accrual accounting, I have not seen that quantified formally in any way other than in a research paper where the authors referred to France having spent perhaps up to €1.5 billion on budgetary reforms and other reforms leading to the introduction of accrual accounting. The other figure that was quoted there, but without any particular reference or source, was the assessment that a move to accrual accounting could cost a medium-sized country up to €50 million, but I am not sure of the provenance of those figures or how accurate they are otherwise. Going back to the OECD work that I mentioned, the point is that countries have spent ten years moving from cash-based to accrual accounting, and I am sure they have consumed a lot of resources in doing that. The question is whether they have seen the benefits of that investment. It is the OECD's assessment rather than ours but it is fair to say that the jury is out on that.