Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

We are tempted to say he always does so. In any event, as Deputy Brian Lenihan is not the Minister for Finance here this morning, I ask the occupant of the Taoiseach's chair if he knows whether the Minister for Finance has set the terms for the external investigation into the Department of Finance and whether those terms will include an examination of the advices received and decisions taken by a succession of Ministers for Finance regarding quite particularly the property bubble and all that let to the serious economic decline that has beset the economy over the past 18 months to two years. Will the Minister indicate if this investigation will have access to all the advices that were received by the succession of Ministers for Finance, Mr. McCreevy, the Taoiseach, Deputy Cowen, and the current occupant, the Minister himself? Will the documentation, the advices, be part of a published report resulting from this external investigation?

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