Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 14 December 2016
Public Accounts Committee
Policy on the Retention of Contemporaneous Notes in the Preparation of Board Minutes: National Asset Management Agency
10:00 am
Mr. Frank Daly:
We are, as the Chairman knows, an organisation that is subject to some litigation from time to time. We take litigation, ourselves, from time to time. Obviously, in litigation there is always discovery of documentation. Discovery allows either side - but let us say somebody is taking an action against us - to discover the records of meetings and decisions. In that context it is very important that there is no ambiguity about what is the record of the decision - that there are not two sets, that there are not draft sets, that there are not notes. This would be well realised. If the Chairman reads through the ICSA document in full, that would be part of the rationale there. One needs to have one set of minutes, which actually records the decisions as agreed by all the board members.
Yes, they are discoverable. Yes, they have been tested in court. I do not think, as I recall, that there has ever been a case in which the minutes have been an issue or found deficient. I am conscious of the fact that we have a couple of cases that are live, so I do not want to go into any great detail in regard to that.