Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Before I call in the Comptroller and Auditor General on the topic of this fund, I understand and acknowledge that in the case with which I dealt, Ms O'Donoghue has gone through the entire process. I did not even quibble. She was right, and I have no argument with the process, but she went through the process with the punter and not with the company.

We will come to the Comptroller and Auditor General, but I want to ask Ms O'Donoghue one other question on this account. If the account is not a valid one and will magically banish some of these figures, such as the €500 million owed, that is an issue we as a Committee of Public Accounts must consider.

Another question I want to ask Ms O'Donoghue - we will discuss it with the Comptroller and Auditor General in a minute - concerns a passage in page 15 of the same account. I refer to the investment account for 2015. People will find this intriguing. We will have to follow it up. Essentially, up to 2015, when funds were available in the account, they were lodged with the Central Bank. The middle sentence in the paragraph is clear when it states that all sums are now payable into the current account and that in total there were five settlement transactions in the investment account in 2015, including a payment of €35,682 in respect of the European Central Bank negative interest rate for 2014. What that says to me is that the Social Insurance Fund lodged money overnight or for a period with the Irish Central Bank and because it was paying a negative interest rate, the Department's investment fund lost €35,682 by merely lodging money with the Central Bank. It is exasperating from our point of view that State organisations lose money by placing it with another State organisation. I know Ms O'Donoghue will say, and I presume from what I have just read, that the Department has moved away from the Central Bank and is putting its money in some bank that at least will not take money off it. I know we are in a negative interest rate, but is my reading of the account correct? It is an issue for the Central Bank separately and not the Department's problem.