Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

The Minister for Finance is considering all these matters. The Deputy will be aware that he responded to Deputy Adams in January in respect of appointments made by him as Minister and the Department under the new procedures. On 7 July 2011, the Minister announced the appointments to the independent fiscal advisory council and pointed out that the council is part of a wider agenda of reform of Ireland's budgetary architecture.

I do not have to hand up-to-date information in regard to appointments to banks. However, the Minister outlined that there had been two appointments to the board of the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, IBRC. He also pointed out that owing to the specific skills required given the nature of the business model that applies at IBRC, he would not be proceeding with public advertisement of the vacancies. He further pointed out that for the sake of completeness, he had in 2011 formed a panel of suitably qualified people for possible appointment or nomination to the boards of particular banks following a public expression of interest process and that the Bank of Ireland had recently appointed an appointee from this panel to its board. I must stress that these appointments were in areas where a specific expertise was required by the boards concerned.

If the Deputy wishes to table a parliamentary question on the matter to the Minister for Finance, he will provide him with an update on the evolving process in so far as the banks and boards of banks are concerned.

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