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

With respect, is the Minister of State trying to peddle it to us that the only thing this legislation does is to provide that NewERA be asked for advice about the sale or disposal of an asset? It is not. I went through the section repeatedly. The Minister of State does not want to own up to this issue. The Minister can direct the agency to sell off his or her own shares. It can actually allow for the agency to provide project management services in regard to the sell-off or disposal of the Minister's interest in the shares. This goes to the very heart of it.

It is really below the Minister to try to tell members of this committee, who have studied this legislation in great detail, that this is just about advice. It is not. This allows the Minister to issue a direction to the agency, in which the Minister holds a share, saying, "I want to dispose of that share and I am asking you to project-manage the disposal of that share." The key point here is that there is no recourse to the Houses of the Oireachtas. It will not be debated by Members of the Seanad and the Dáil.

The Minister said earlier that the Government had a majority, as if it did not really matter. It matters, because while the outcome of the debate is important, the debate itself is equally important in terms of holding people to account and ensuring the decisions and the reason for the decisions are teased out in proper parliamentary debate.

Will the Minister of State just acknowledge that the Bill confers on the Minister the ability to issue a direction to a State agency in which the Minister holds a share to dispose of that share without the prior approval of the Houses of the Oireachtas, perhaps with the exception of Irish Water?