Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

In my view, this is completely different from a civil servant or other official of any Department appearing before a committee and offering views on Government policy. In terms of the review carried out by the Department of Finance over a ten-year period one of the major issues identified was that alternative opinions should be published. We should not be afraid of people criticising our policies because, in my view, that makes them stronger and more robust. The issue here is that this is a multi-billion euro investment fund in respect of which the best experts in the country are employed to ensure it is managed and invested appropriately on behalf of this generation of Irish citizens and future generations. A situation could arise whereby a school teacher, plumber, electrician and so on who is very popular in his or her constituency is successful in being elected to the Dáil and, because his or her party is the largest party in Government, is appointed Minister for Finance and is allowed to direct the entire fund into a bust bank. The person who is the expert in this regard and may have disagreed with the decision is not allowed to express an opinion on that decision. I believe that is a serious issue. The situation that could arise in this regard is different to that of policy directions. This relates to an order or direction given to an investment fund. I do not understand what would be so wrong with the CEO of the agency coming in here and saying that the Minister directed the agency to invest €20 billion of the fund into a particular bank, that everyone knew it would never provide a return and despite that he or she and others argued at the time that it was a bad investment and could jeopardise X, Y or Z the decision was taken and that bank was then liquidated. What would be so wrong in that? Why does Government, Ministers and other people fear CEOs giving their opinion to other parliamentarians?