Mr. Tony Murphy:

Hopefully I am smiling most of the time. Fraud, as the Deputy knows, is a very sensitive issue. We are not a big player in this game. We have to use our professional scepticism. If we see something we report it. That is why six cases is not a huge amount. That is out of about 750 transactions that we audit in a year. We have a fraud team in-house which would do an initial screening based on the auditors' initial feeling. We identified 12 cases from our audit work and then eight from third parties. We have denunciations from third parties as well. Of the 12 suspected cases from our audit work, we forwarded six to OLAF because our legal service felt there was some value in six of the cases. I think that was justified by the fact that OLAF did open an investigation in all six cases.

The six cases cover France, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Romania. Five relate to agriculture and one relates to cohesion. They emanate from three different funds. There were three in the European Agricultural Guarantee Fund, EAGF; two in the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development, EAFRD; and one in the European Regional Development Fund, ERDF. That is probably as much information as I can give to show that it is spread across a number of member states and across a number of different policy areas.

If we do a specific audit, that would be different. Let us say we pursue fraud in the CAP, for instance, as I mentioned earlier. If that is published in 2022 and we find particular instances, they may be given as specific examples as part of an audit work or weaknesses in a member state if we find them. OLAF has its own reporting requirements and it also has some restrictions. That is as much as we can say on that although I believe I can say the type of thing that arises. It might be a grant that is used for a purpose other than that intended. There could be the artificial creation of conditions to obtain funding, which would probably be the main reason that ties in with fraud, that it is deliberate. We have errors that are not deliberate but the artificial creation of conditions is obviously a deliberate act and therefore we would view that as a fraud case.

That probably does not answer the Deputy fully but I hope that it is adequate.