Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick East, Fine Gael)

I welcome this debate and wish to take up a number of points with the Minister. He has extended the period covered by the commission of inquiry from 1 January 2003 to 28 September 2008 in respect of all elements bar the supervisory role of the Central Bank and the Financial Regulator. The Minister has extended the period in respect of the institutions to 15 January 2009, when Anglo Irish Bank was nationalised. Where the supervisory role is concerned, however, the period has not been extended. I do not know whether this is a typo. Will the Minister clarify the situation? It is important that the date be extended to 15 January to match the period applied in respect of the other elements, namely, the individual banks, specifically Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide, and the external auditors.

My reason for making this request is straightforward. In terms of the issue of Anglo Irish Bank and the back-to-back loans with Irish Life and Permanent, €3.45 billion was provided on 26 September and the balance of the €4 billion was provided on 30 September. The latter action would fall outside the period under review. The preliminary financial report on Anglo Irish Bank was published in December 2008, putting it outside the terms of reference. In those accounts, bank deposits were represented as customer deposits to give the impression that the bank's balance sheet was stronger than it really was. I hope the Minister will clarify this point and extend the period.

I wish to raise two issues concerning the commission. The Minister, the Taoiseach and former Ministers for Finance should make themselves available and evidence should be given in public. It is critical that the advice given to the Minister at the time be made available to the commission.

I will deal with the macro level shortly. I am digressing slightly, but these are important matters. NAMA's revised business plan is inadequate in that it has no profit and loss accounts or cash flow projections. When the draft business plan was debated, the Minister did not state from where the information had come. He now informs the House that it came directly from the banks. In late 2008, he commissioned PricewaterhouseCoopers, PWC, to carry out due diligence reviews of the various institutions and their loans. Those PWC reports need to be disclosed in full so that we can know what advice was available to the Minister while NAMA's draft business plan was being proposed. Anything less and there would not be proper disclosure.

The macro report will be before the finance committee, of which I am a member. According to the Minister, it is the Government's opinion that certain decisions that were fundamentally political in nature are not amenable to an investigation the purpose of which is to make a finding of fact. When the report is before the committee, it is important that officials from the Department of Finance attend our meetings with the advice in question if we are to implement clear measures.

I hope the Minister will take my request for an extension on board. Where the commission of investigation and the committee's macro level review are concerned, I also hope he will accept the necessity of making available all of the advice given to him by the regulator and departmental officials. Ministers drive policy and officials only implement it. We need to know the background to decisions.

The PWC due diligence reports started in August or September of 2008. Commissioned by the Minister, they should have fed into the NAMA process. It is not good enough to say that-----

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