Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

What is Mr. Watt’s and Mr. McCarthy’s view of the statutory oversight of confidentiality agreements some of which were not available for this report, given that taxpayers’ money is involved and that the Comptroller and Auditor General could not access some of the documents? In respect of the public oversight available to the Department and the Comptroller and Auditor General and indeed this committee, while it is perfectly reasonable to withhold names and in this instance withhold agency and departmental names, I have a fundamental difficulty with it. We are talking about taxpayers’ money and a State agency with a confidentiality agreement that I think has no place in the public sector, most especially if the information is withheld from the person responsible for auditing and, in Mr. Watt’s case, a person responsible for an element of its governance.