Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses and I thank Ms Patricia Devlin for her work on this matter, which was most insightful. Overall, there is some reassurance from the presentations. I wish to make a suggestion without getting into the entire HR issue. Clearly, there must be discretion and the ability to use the full toolkit. My suggestion is that matters of sanction and disclosure ought to be hardwired into the rules for severance and discretionary payments rather than having them running in parallel as a type of second thought and a box that might be ticked. It seems sensible that some of the core operative rules would be about sanction and disclosure. That is my proposition. The framework set out in the Comptroller and Auditor General's report is extremely helpful. It also tallies with common sense and good practice. However, hardwiring it into the rules might result in a little more clarity of thought.

On the issue of ministerial appointments, these were all cash severance payments. I understand from the report that there was a total of 41 of them between 2011 and 2013. Will the witness explain how there were 41? Did that tally with the change in Government?