Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour)
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I will leave to the Chair the methodology by which the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform comes in here. It is necessary for the Secretary General of the Department to come in and I suspect he wants to come in, to one committee or another. The head of procurement, who sat on the board, should also come in. It is only through this that we can get to the bottom of where this was going.

Circular 12/2010 explicitly states the requirements of a civil servant who sits on a State board. If we go by what the Taoiseach said in the Dáil, however, all the circulars on this matter are a waste of time and not worth the paper they are written on. The requirements were also incorporated, verbatim, into the code of conduct for State boards, which was launched in August 2016 by the current Minister. His responsibility is listed in that circular, as is the responsibility of all civil servants on State boards. It states when he or she must go to the Secretary General and when he or she must immediately go to a Minister. There is a process issue here, beyond this whole topic, and that is also an issue for us on the Committee of Public Accounts. Is this circular being adhered to across the Civil Service? It is bigger than the hospital board issue.