Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail)
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I wish to put a few matters on the record in this regard. The liquidation began on 7 February 2013.

At the time, control and oversight over remuneration for liquidators was governed by the Companies Act 1963, which also provided for scrutiny by a committee of inspection in the High Court. No committee of inspection has been established in respect of the IBRC or provided for in the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation Act 2013. Ordinarily these committees of inspection are made up of shareholders and creditors and their function is to assist the liquidator with approval fees and legal actions and to attend meetings on an ongoing basis to review the progress of the liquidation. The role of the committee was further enhanced in the Companies Act 2014 and as a result most liquidators seek to ensure that a committee is appointed. Special liquidators for the IBRC have not done so. If there is a dispute with the liquidator on remuneration, for example, or on fees or things of that nature, an application can be made to the court to determine the matter. Two examples of that happening were the case concerning ESG Reinsurance Limited before Mr. Justice Kelly and the case concerning Mouldpro International Limited in 2012 before Ms Justice Finlay Geoghegan, as a result of which the liquidator's fees were reduced.

Sections 646 and 647 of the Companies Act 2014 provide that the basis of a liquidator's remuneration is to be agreed with the committee of inspection to which I referred earlier. Another section provides for challenges to liquidators' remuneration and provides for arbitration and so on in that regard. Again, this is missing in the case of the IBRC liquidation. Control and oversight and a mechanism to effectively challenge the cost of the special liquidators are also missing in this case. Consultation meetings behind closed doors on the issue of fees with officials from the Department of Finance are, to my mind, not sufficient.

Fees to the end of December 2016 were in the region of €225 million. While if the fees are broken down to hourly rates, they are based on reduced rates negotiated by NAMA for general professional fees - though NAMA has no function or role in this at all - the number of hours and the grades associated with the work being carried out are unknown. Based on parliamentary questions I have tabled, it would be my humble conclusion that there is really no oversight. The liquidators may well be paying themselves rock bottom in terms of actual fees per hour, but the number of hours and the amount of work being carried out would certainly be the greatest in Irish commercial history for a liquidation. I would say that it would compare unfavourably with some big international liquidations. In terms of the level of scrutiny, we do not have a committee of inspection or a route to challenge. I do not know why those elements were omitted or whether the Bill to establish the liquidation in 2013 just remained silent on them and the IBRC chose not to have a committee of inspection.

In the replies to the first round of parliamentary questions I circulated - and I sent more around this morning in which I sought further clarification on the first set of answers - it was stated that in 2016 there were eight meetings between the Department of Finance and the liquidators. In 2017, with costs rising, there were only three and a fourth is planned towards the end of this month. I specifically asked for a breakdown of the minutes of the meetings. Commercial sensitivity was given as the reason they could not be provided, yet in a standard liquidation those minutes would be available to a committee of inspection, to shareholders and to creditors. That is us, the people, albeit through the Minister, who owned the company. The replies also would not provide details of the grades of the people who are operating. Again, commercial sensitivity was cited. That too would be information which would be available to the company owners - in effect the people through the Minister.

It is very worrying that one of the parliamentary question replies said the Minister and the Comptroller and Auditor General have no role in this. I asked if any external parties or external State agencies were asked to assist the Department of Finance in the oversight of this matter, in challenging fees or in anything along those lines. The replies were silent on that issue, so we can assume that there is not any external help. We are told that the Comptroller and Auditor General has no role, the Department has no role and the Minister depends on quarterly reports on these issues issued and published by the IBRC.