Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not disagree with anything the Chairman or Deputy Fleming said. Those who potentially misled the committee last week should certainly apologise to the committee. The serious damage that has been done to the charity sector was due to the fact that the CRC directors were directly taking money raised by fundraising. They put their hands in that pot and put it into their own pockets. That did the most damage throughout this controversy. It has been very useful to have Ms Day and Mr. O'Brien here today to provide clarification on this.

This comes back to the broader issue of corporate governance in section 38 agencies and gives us a real insight into the chaos in the sector where a board of directors is signing off on accounts and submitting them to the Companies Registration Office in a go-along-to-get-along mentality and then crying foul over something in the accounts. This never would have come up if Deputy Ross had not been quoting directly from the audited accounts that were submitted to the Companies Registration Office. The auditors have significant questions to answer. Mr. Conlan, who was CEO of the Mater Hospital before Ms Day, was on the board of the CRC at the time and should have been extremely well placed. When he comes before us in January I hope he can cast more light on this regarding what was going on at board meetings that inaccurate accounts were submitted to the Companies Registration Office. Directors have a legal obligation under company law to provide a true and fair view in their accounts of the company's activities. Mr. Conlan could cast some light on the fact that the directors were signing off on accounts and that audited accounts were being submitted that clearly were not true or fair in the case of the pensions.