Mr. Paul Maskey:

If one's party colleague holds the Department of Finance and Personnel, for example, one cannot be the chair of the Public Accounts Committee. It is the biggest distributor of the budget, so one cannot belong to that party. It must be somebody from another party. However, one can belong to a party where one's colleague has any other Department.

I was chair for four or five years and it was good. It allowed one to get seriously involved in the local politics with regard to scrutiny of the other Departments. Also, I had to get it into my head that I had to leave any political baggage I had at the door, regardless of whether it was a party colleague who held the ministerial post. My ten colleagues on that committee would have made sure I did that. I believe we did it well.