Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will not get into what the Minister did. I will leave him out of it because he is not here. Did Mr. Moran not advise the Minister to take a few extra days? There was talk during the week it all happened. The Taoiseach wanted the Comptroller and Auditor General to do it and did not understand he could not do it. The next day in the Dáil the Tánaiste wanted an independent authority to do it. Independent people called for somebody independent to do it. On Friday morning we had an announcement from Riga that KPMG would do it. Then there was confusion and a judge was appointed. The Secretary General is the Accounting Officer and the headlong rush into this by the Department to get it done quickly has exposed the taxpayer to the possibility of greater costs than might have been necessary had the Department taken its time and planned this or had the project put out to tender. It might have taken longer but it would have been more independent. Is this how the Department of Finance is still doing its business? It just appoints people and tells them come back in a few weeks to tell it how much they think it will cost. This breaches all public procurement rules.