Mr. Kevin Bakhurst:

No one brought the numbers to my attention. It is fair to point out that the CFO who was responsible for making the write-downs had left the organisation. From what I have discovered subsequently and as per the documents we have provided to the committee, the organisation felt this matter was accounted for in the accounts, although I would say not clearly enough. It was there in the accounts as an impairment. It could have been clearer but it was clear enough that NewERA saw it and came back asking exactly what the impairments were for. The issue was properly recorded, it went through the board and the audit and risk committee, ARC, felt it had dealt with it.

As I said in my opening statement, one never wants to lose sums of public money, whether it comes from land sales or otherwise. Sometimes, unfortunately, significant projects go wrong. To give a bit of context, the 39 projects we looked at and provided information on to the Department had a total value of approximately €57 million and they came in within €500,000 of that. So, overall-----