Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

——is being passed to the National Treasury Management Agency. According to the press release, a "draft delegation order is currently being discussed with the Attorney General's office". Under law — as the Taoiseach well knows, because it was his predecessor, Charlie McCreevy, who set it up — the NTMA is at quite a distance from this House and is largely exempt from freedom of information provisions. It does not respond directly to the House, meeting only occasionally with the Oireachtas Committee on Finance and the Public Service. Effectively, the Minister for Finance is delegating——

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