Barry Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It was not at all provocative. The greatest example of how information was withheld from the rest of the Cabinet came at a time when the EMC saw fit to take funds from the National Pensions Reserve Fund in the matter of the setting up of Irish Water.

That meant that no Member of this House could ask questions pertaining to how those funds had been spent because of the legislation governing the taking of funds from the NPRF. Had they been taken from elsewhere, we would have been able to ask questions and received answers much earlier than was ultimately the case. I have given the Minister of State an example of how the powers of the Economic Management Council usurped those of the remainder of the Cabinet at the time. Does she not have similar fears about the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government's veto over the rest of the Cabinet on funds derived from-----

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