Mr. Derek Moran:

A huge amount of effort went into ensuring that the management of the fund, jointly managed by the National Treasury Management Agency, NTMA, on behalf of the Minister, and Apple, would seek to minimise these sorts of costs and monitor the performance of the investment managers. If they are underperforming, the portfolios can be redistributed among those who are performing better to ensure that the amount of money in the fund is maintained to the greatest possible extent. The Comptroller and Auditor General referred to the fact that it is a very conservative investment mandate and that is at the heart of the care being taken to make sure that the costs are not excessive and the losses are minimised.

Our options were to put that money on deposit if we could find somebody to take it or to put it into escrow. The risk with putting it on deposit is that in the negative interest rate environment, the fund would probably lose €60 million or €70 million a year every year.