John Perry (Sligo-North Leitrim, Fine Gael)
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I am amazed at how political this meeting has become this morning. The allegation that this committee is being muzzled is extraordinary given that the documents have been released. When one looks at the documentation, one can see that this meeting was not going to deal with all of the issues therein. I have scanned through the papers. We must be honest about the fact that politicians often get briefs with very little notice. It is not in any way unreasonable to expect, given the backup provided to all of the parties here, that we could scan the documentation enough to know what is contained therein. I totally resent the accusation of outside interference by the Minister. We do not want to pre-judge the outcome of the meeting with an inference that information has been provided in order to interfere with today's proceedings. That is far from the case. I was Chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts for over two years and laid great emphasis on the importance of impartiality. We are here to investigate the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General. Obviously there are limitations on the role of the committee which have been in place since the foundation of the State. There is no point in pre-empting the debate that will take place. The fact that there are witnesses who are prepared to come from Northern Ireland is entirely at their discretion. Nobody who has been asked to come before the committee has declined to do so. We must look at this in the context of the matter before us. The allegations that are being made relate entirely to the Northern Ireland jurisdiction. We cannot be accountable for allegations related to another jurisdiction. We must be very careful in how we handle this.