Mr. Dermot O'Leary:

I agree with the Senator that we are not in a star chamber. We also know the role of the committee. The Workplace Relations Commission is not an option for us because it gets the Minister off the hook. The Minister should be on the hook to provide direction to CIÉ or funding from his Department. There are 16,700 people involved in these two pension schemes and a back-of-the-envelope exercise, giving each of them five family members, brings it to 80,000 people, which amounts to the total votes for 20 Dáil seats. There is a significant cohort of people who would take a very dim view of individuals washing their hands of this matter and not using their good offices to resolve it.