Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

When one reads the documentation relating to Client A - which outlines internal discussions that occurred within State Street - one comes across phrases such as: "Gotta win this one! Any ideas how to get more revenue would be appreciated."; "We need to charge fee then otherwise they get suspicious."; "makes it look like we actually thought about it and did the calculations."; "need to be very creative here"; and "Here’s what I think we should do with our new best friends". When one sees terminology of that nature, one must question - in the context of the reputation of both the State and, more particularly, the National Treasury Management Agency - what should have happened when this issue originally came to light.

In October 2012 when our guests contacted State Street Bank, it wrote back and stated that it was examining transition 14. On 14 November of that year it acknowledged that there were problems. In December 2011 it had agreed that a mark-up had been applied in respect of the original fixed fee of €698,000 - bringing it up to €2.65 million - and that this was fraudulent. In March 2012 the position was reviewed by PricewaterhouseCoopers in Boston which stated that the amount was €2.61 million, slightly less than the €2.65 million indicated by State Street. In July 2012 State Street indicated that when it had considered the position again, it discovered it had avoided taking any risk on the transaction and, therefore, owed the NTMA a further €600,000, or $727,000. On 21 August 2012 the NTMA requested an independent investigation and State Street indicated that there might be problems with transition 4 rather than transition 14. The NTMA then referred the matter to An Garda Síochána and stated at that point that it would accept all the figures but that they were still subject to independent verification. What was the final outcome in respect of this issue?