Dr. Orlaigh Quinn:

I thank the Deputy for his welcome. I appreciate that. It is important that the Comptroller and Auditor General made two recommendations. We fully accept them. The first concerns the audit of the scheme. We have commissioned an independent audit company to carry out an audit on that as recommended. We have had some delay with the company because it has not been able to support a full team but we expect that early in the new year. That is the first part of the audit. The other part is important as well and concerns looking at the impact of the scheme. We plan to perform an evaluation which will look at the longer-term impacts in terms of whether it achieved business survival and job protection and its impact on the public finances. They are important questions for us to be able to stand over, not least in case, though hopefully not, of future schemes of this nature. As the Deputy pointed out, it is important that we make sure public money is spent correctly. There is no question of that. We kept the criteria simple. We did it through the local authorities so we knew every business was a rate payer and, therefore, a bona fidebusiness. That was important.