Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The position is it will be a stand-alone company which will be regulated in great detail. Its primary element will be delivering on the governance commitments we have entered into under the contract. Every member of the board will have an obligation to ensure delivery to the State under the terms of the contract. We have written the contract in great detail to ensure we will have access to the auditing, that it will deliver on time and that it will be rolled out in a certain way.

We are very confident not only that we have the governance but also that by having a representative on the board we will have somebody who is overseeing the public interest, which is at the heart of the contract being negotiated. This is different from, for example, having a public interest director in a bank whose job is to serve its shareholders. This company is set up to service this contract and we have set out in triplicate what that means. Our public interest representative will be overseeing not only the representative's role but the role of the company, which is to honour this contract.