Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 30 November 2023

Public Accounts Committee

Appropriation Accounts 2022
Vote 7 - Office of the Minister for Finance
Finance Accounts 2022
Report on the Accounts of the Public Services 2022
Chapter 1 – Exchequer Financial Outturn for 2022
Chapter 2 – Reporting Ireland’s EU Transactions
Chapter 24 – Performance of the Ireland Apple Escrow Fund
Chapter 25 – Irish Fiscal Advisory Council

9:30 am

Mr. Des Carville:

It is subject to a procurement process. One of the first things I did when I came in ten years ago was to set up panels. We have a legal panel and a financial advisory panel. Within the financial advisory, there are sub-panels as well. The first thing is a requirement to jump through procurement hoops. We have run a very thorough process with lots of checks and balances to get on a panel. If we are doing a specific transaction, we will run a mini competition from within the panel and have different firms play off against each other. That really helps us get the best of both. We get legal protection because all the terms, conditions, warranties, indemnities and all that kind of stuff are agreed upfront in a competitive way and also the fees are dealt with in a competitive way. If we are selling shares for example, we might have a syndicate. The last one we had included three international banks and they gave us advice-----