Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Yes, I shall speak on this issue. There is no us. Deputies Cassells, Aylward, the Chairman and I do not meet upstairs on the fourth floor to decide what our angle is on any given day. I have the experience of having been a member of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform for quite a few years. I was also a member of the Joint Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis and recall that the debates during private session were extremely heated, and intra-party at times. Deputy Michael McGrath and I were on both committees, from a Fianna Fáil perspective. At times we were at each others throats, for want of a better expression, as was everybody else and we were also in dispute with the clerk to the committee and the committee secretariat at times. I am saddened by the politicisation of today's matter. Yes, it involved criticism being levelled at the office of the Minister for Finance in terms of the scheduling of a meeting, of which the timing was inappropriate. As I said in the House yesterday, it was absolutely clear, which the minutes prove, that the man was not in town to collect for the Red Cross. It was another timing matter in terms of meeting these people, if they wanted to, at some other date in time. That was wrong.

For different reasons some of us are absent for part or all of a meeting. At a critical stage when we were talking, and we had a lengthy discussion on the wording of the report, no Fine Gael representative was in the room. None. In fact, it was clear it was about to come up as the next item on the agenda.