Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

There is an obligation on Government Departments to report to me and the Department of public expenditure, once a year, any case where there is non-competitive procurement, not even non-compliant procurement.

There can be circumstances where there can be non-competitive procurement if, for example, there is only one supplier. That is routinely reported by Departments. With non-Government departments, or non-Vote holders, the requirement is not as stringent, so our bringing it to attention in the financial statements is also the way it comes to the Department of public expenditure. We send the same list to the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform on a routine basis, so it is alerted that way.