Mr. Mark Griffin:

One of the biggest problems an Accounting Officer has at a meeting of the Committee of Public Accounts is trying to find the right note. This came up in the accounts the Comptroller and Auditor General previously produced. It is an issue he raised regarding the extent of cash holdings by Inland Fisheries Ireland. We withheld €4.5 million from IFI because it already had a significant cash holding in its accounts. We have been trying to run this down in recent years to keep it in line with what we considered normal for a State agency of this nature. What the Vote spend does not show is the spend from own resources. The bulk of the €5.9 million underspend was withholding €4.5 million due to cash in hand. I do not believe it greatly affected the activities of IFI during 2021. Like many other organisations it was affected by Covid. It had a significant programme of activities it delivered during the course of the year.