Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)
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The Minister is off to a bad start regarding this amendment. This relates to the Minister of whatever Department giving a direction to what hopefully will be a very valuable fund set up for the interest of the State that those directions should be transparent, published and subject to the oversight that would be required under orders. The legislation does not limit the type of directions that are possible. The Minister said it may be day to day business but it does not necessarily need to be day to day business. It can be substantial and significant and having great consequences in terms of the direction taken by a Minister.

On the point that it would hamper the work of the agency, that is easily remedied by including the other 12 words at the end of section 4, which would state "... without prejudice to the validity of anything previously done under the order". That would get around that issue. What is at the core here is that Ministers want to be able to issue directions to the fund without having to comply with Oireachtas oversight in a transparent fashion and without having to publish those directions.