Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

One of the learning points from that was the danger of advancing funding without being specific as to purposes for use and guaranteeing that those purposes would be delivered on. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform issued a circular stating that the exception was to be advance funding, and that exception could only be where there were adequate controls in place. Effectively, many organisations do not have working capital. They are completely dependent on grant funding and, therefore, they cannot act without being funded in advance. That is why the Arts Council has sanction to fund most of those organisations in advance. What one then needs to be doing is funding as one goes, rather than funding in a single tranche. That is a learning point.