Trevor Ó Clochartaigh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Yes. I made the point earlier that a number of companies did not follow the guidelines but they were also under the oversight and the watch of the Department, Pobal and the EU. The question has to be raised, and I have raised it in the context of MFG, for example, about who was watching over that type of management that was going on because it was not just happening over a very short period. This was an ongoing practice but it is very important that we do not tar all those local development companies with the same brush.

Of the 30 or so companies, is the Minister talking about a very small number of them or is he talking about the companies in general? That needs to be clarified in case people might be of the opinion that all the local companies were being managed in a bad way. In terms of the companies that were not following the guidelines, what was done about it by Pobal, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, which was managing the Leader programmes, the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, in terms of child care cases, etc., which would have been managing programmes, and the EU, which would have scrutinised the Leader funding? The paperwork for Leader was unbelievable. In terms of the auditing, I was often told by people working in Leader companies that the amount of audit going on was massive. Why was this not picked up and corrected? Was it that the audit system was totally wrong?