Mr. Paul Kiely:

I wish to put in context the environment within which the questions about the salaries in the CRC were asked in the first place.

This probably first came into the public domain following the HIQA report on Tallaght hospital which was published in May 2012. The quote in the HIQA report about remuneration stated that there was no remuneration committee of the board and that minutes of the board meetings did not record whether remuneration of the chief executive or members of the management team was discussed. It was not made clear to the authority how decisions were made at either board or committee level with regard to the appointment or remuneration of senior executive managers in designated or acting roles. For example, the governance of decisions to substantially additionally remunerate individual post-holders - in one case by more than €150,000 - was not clear.

Following that, the Minister went on the record.