Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

Will the Minister indicate the identity of the new external members of TLAC and how they came to be appointed? Does the committee have the power to set the terms and conditions of candidates' appointments? We have heard recently of extraordinary exit packages awarded to senior members of the public service. There is a suggestion that a Secretary General who recently announced he will be moving on may not have had that arrangement, although I understood it was standard procedure under the TLAC process.

On the senior Government position that is exempt from the TLAC procedure - the Secretary General to the Government and the Taoiseach - and I presume the Secretary General to the Minister for Finance and perhaps the Minister's Department, the Secretary General in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Office of the Revenue Commissioners, will the terms of reference not consider bringing them all under the one arrangement? Like everything, we introduce a cap but the first thing we do is clear the exceptions and the exemptions. I suggest the Minister bring those exemptions under a streamlined arrangement rather than have a different approach.

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