Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour) | Oireachtas source

No, that is not what I asked. KPMG will read the contracts, apply the payments and verify what is due under the contracts. That is not the issue. KPMG is going to take a literal approach. It will take the contracts and read them. I could read a contract in ten minutes and determine what is due at a particular time. My question is whether KPMG has any power to examine the five-year adjustments which should have been carried out and which may not have been carried out. Is KPMG in a position to ensure that all of that is correct or is it just engaged in a payments process? I want that cleared up because it is important. KPMG is a big company but this is the equivalent of trying to scramble an egg. KPMG is operating on the instructions of Coillte. It will just ensure that payments that are deemed to be due are properly calculated. However, the one-sided nature of the contracts is now evident and everyone cannot be wrong on that. Mr. Murphy has a different view and that is fair enough. He must put the company or corporate view out there but he is going to hear from so many people, including my colleagues here, that the contracts are unilateral in the context of equality and, from that perspective, KPMG has no role. The only role in that context is for Coillte at corporate level. As I said earlier, Coillte should consider rejigging the contracts in the interests of good business relationships with those people who are affected. Mr. Murphy has claimed that there are not many people affected. If that is the case and there are only ten or 15 people affected, why not do it for them? Why not ensure that some of the issues raised by Senator Mulherin are addressed? She is not making it up. She comes from Mayo and knows what she is talking about. Why can issues like maintenance and so forth not be looked at? There is a huge amount that is outside the remit of KPMG. It is only looking at the monetary end of things. I am referring here to the contracts, the wording of same and so on. I would like to see Coillte rejigging the contracts.

I made the point to the IFA representatives that the numbers affected are small and Mr. Murphy has reiterated that. However, there may be other people out there who have not yet realised the position and who have not understood the import of those contracts. Some contracts were only signed in the late 1990s and something will only hit the fan in the next three to four years. There may be a greater cohort of affected people then. We need an awful lot more information from Coillte. We want to know where the people affected are located and the nature of the contracts that were entered into. We also want to know how much time is left before the contracts expire and the anticipated end-date of those contracts. Then we will be thrashing and will know a lot more, including whether the number affected is small.