Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The process the Chairman has outlined sounds thorough and satisfactory. He is quite right to deal with this in this manner because it is an issue of public concern. The sum of money, €250,000, is the cost of a house for many people who are looking to buy one today, and the Chairman has been honest enough to admit that he would be the first to be hopping mad if people came before the committee in similar situations, be they university presidents ordering flowers or anything else we have seen here. It is essential we apply the same guidelines and level of scrutiny to this issue as we would to another issue.

There is, however, a broader issue. Is this an isolated incident? What was the cost of a ministerial office back in that period? Was it only the Chairman's office that cost €250,000? Was this an average cost? There is work that must be done on the protocols in place for ministerial offices. I will reserve my judgment until I review the correspondence, because I have only seen the media reports but those reports clearly suggest the Minister must sign off or approve the expenditure and we must establish the protocol there. Does a Minister actually sign off line by line and should he do so? What is the protocol now?

This is also relative, it must be compared to other ministerial offices at the time. This committee has scrutinised political expenses and public sector allowances and there is a body of work that should be done on ministerial offices on a broader level. When the Comptroller and Auditor General talks about things like value for money, it can only be established by making comparisons with similar situations. We should see if it is possible to establish the protocols and the process for other ministerial offices. Also, is it just that someone has submitted a freedom of information request about the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee? If the FOI had been about a different Minister of State at that time in that Government, would there have been a similar level of expense? We do not know the answer to that question now but the process outlined sounds satisfactory and those are the two questions we should encompass in that process.