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

However, it is not independent. We will move on and agree to disagree on the independence issue.

I hate to say it but Mr. Moran's wording was very clever and accurate but nicely confusing to the public. He made it very clear a minute ago, and rightly so, technically correct but giving the wrong impression, that the cost of this would not have to come out of any voted expenditure. In his opening statement to us an hour ago with regard to IBRC, he said the liquidation has resulted in a cash balance of €1.85 billion which ultimately will be available for distribution to creditors including the State. What he is actually saying is it will come out of taxpayers' money because the State is the taxpayer. He is saying any cost that comes out of this extra inquiry will come out of the amount available for distribution to the State. That is in his opening statement and it is accurate. He also said a minute ago that the cost of this inquiry will not come out of any voted expenditure. That is also accurate. If the people of Ireland, whom we are here to represent, listened to what he said a minute ago they would think this cost will not be voted in some way by the people because he said it would not come out of voted expenditure. I must highlight he said a half an hour ago it will come from any distribution available to the State and the taxpayer. The taxpayer is paying for this through the amount of funding that will come back as a result of the distribution. A lower distribution will now be available to the taxpayer and the State because of the cost of this, and we still do not know to the nearest million how much it will be.

I apologise to the Chairman for the time I have taken on this point. I expected a straight-up answer in this day and age on how much it will cost. I was expecting to be told it was commercially sensitive, but I expected somebody somewhere to have a cost.

The essence of what Deputy Deasy said about Siteserv was a relationship framework was in place since 2009. In the documents we received during the week Mr. Moran stated IBRC received further significant levels of State support and ultimately began pursuing an orderly wind-down strategy in accordance with the joint restructuring and work-out plan for IBRC dated 31 January 2011 which was approved by the European Commission and EU state aid rules.

Mr. Moran said he had a busy year, and everyone is busy, but the public will be disappointed that a decision was made on 31 January 2011 but it was 15 months later before the Department of Finance came back. The revised framework was all under Mr. Moran's control. Under the revised framework, the new arrangement states that representatives of the Minister can attend board meetings in an observer capacity. Had the Department of Finance been doing its business in 2011 or earlier than that, the Minister would have had the right to have an observer at all the board meetings in 2011, long before the Siteserv deal was on the agenda. The revised agreement also stated the Minister was entitled to be notified of any information he reasonably required. All of this could have been in place long before the Siteserv deal came in. It was in the ability of the Department of Finance to do that. What is even more worrying from what Mr. Moran said a few minutes ago is that, ultimately, the troika put a deadline on it. He said the troika had in its third review that this was to be done by the final quarter of 2011 and that it slipped to the first quarter of 2012.

Even if the troika had not been in town, the Department of Finance should have done this in a more expeditious manner. If it had done so, that revised framework agreement would have been in place 12 months earlier than it was. Why did it take 15 months to put the revised framework in place when the Department knew this was in a wind-down situation, approved by the EU on 31 January 2011?