Mr. Stephen Mulvany:

The most basic control measure – you cannot even use the lack of the IFMS at the time to explain this – is the check to see goods have been received before paying the amount invoiced for. That is the fundamental control. Essentially, an invoice was being received for an amount that might have made sense during the Covid pandemic when the volumes were, perhaps, small, but certainly did not make sense at another time. The basic check was not in place until somebody at the centre, in fairness to them, asked, albeit far too late, why we were making the payment and who got the products. Once that question started to be asked, we stopped paying. The supplier started screaming blue murder, and what happened happened.

On the Deputy's other question, €12.8 million is what was paid for sensors as part of the overall cost. Accounting for individual sensors rather than packs, that amounts to 218,000 sensors to be explained over the period 2021 to 2024. When we use the estimate – which is very sensitive, three days being the average – and given no good local or central stock-control records, there are 218,000 sensors to explain. Products worth from €5 million to €7 million were not accounted for or were never received. It was nugatory expenditure, effectively. The figure relates to between 91,000 and 132,000 sensors. We were being billed-----