Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Mine too, but I am saying I am not asked whether it would be all right; I am told that it is being sent. That is the way it should be, but Mr. Carville and I are not getting €222 million. The liquidators are and I think the public are entitled to know. The Comptroller and Auditor General and the Department of Finance have no role in the procurement of the joint special liquidators. If we have all of these powers that trump those of a committee of inspection, why are we not using them? Is it not legitimate for us to say to someone to whom we are paying €222 million that, while we want them to achieve the best value for money on all of the services they are procuring, we want to have an input? However, we have no role in that regard.

The contract is commercially sensitive. We had a lengthy engagement on the basis that we knew the price being paid per hour, but we could not see the contract because it was commercially sensitive. I disagree with this. We are told we cannot have a copy of the indemnity document because it is commercially sensitive too. They were the answers from the Minister last September. He would not tell us whether there had been a fee increase or what staff were assigned to perform each task as the information was commercially sensitive. Minutes of meetings are also described as being commercially sensitive and this was at a time when there was no legal case. I am bound to say that - I am sure the witnesses as individuals are doing extremely difficult and time consuming work - if a case had not been taken last Friday, they would have been sent here today with riding instructions and that we would be listening to the line, "That is commercially sensitive".