Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Essentially, new salary guidelines were issued for this position but we were told they could not affect the incumbent and would apply only to the new CEO, whenever the position arose.

What happened, according to freedom of information, FOI, releases I have received, was that NewERA effectively reviewed a business case that was provided to it by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, which in turn was provided to it by Horse Racing Ireland. As I said, there are then other questions because the appointment had been made prior to the formal approval being granted. As Deputy Catherine Murphy rightly said, these decisions can subsequently be used as justification for future decisions, so it is important we pursue this issue to find out how exactly we arrived at this point. It does not appear to be the type of robust analysis we would expect of NewERA.