Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We are completely in the dark about the Comptroller and Auditor General. The Taoiseach came into the House yesterday and almost plucked something out of the cloud, saying he chatted with the Minister that morning and believed the Comptroller and Auditor General could carry out a value-for-money investigation. The Comptroller and Auditor General could not carry out the comprehensive investigation that a commission of investigation could carry out, and that is why the legislation was enacted. We need clarity from the Government urgently on what it is going to do. We are getting conflicting accounts from the Taoiseach and Tánaiste in regard to what kind of review or investigation we are talking about.

I have no difficulty at all with the totality. The reason there should be a commission of investigation is that it would engage with the totality. The idea that €5 million would be paid to directors or shareholders of a bust company is fundamentally wrong from any moral perspective and raises all sorts of alarms. This must be put to the Tánaiste, particularly given that so much money was owed to the taxpayer. The fundamental issue is that the taxpayer lost €105 million overall in the deal.

This must be juxtaposed with the €5 million the shareholders received and the issue of other companies bidding higher. This was all in March 2012. There is a fundamental obligation to get to the bottom of this. That obligation is to the taxpayers and citizens. That is the core issue.

On what basis was the Minister for Finance satisfied the best deal was done? I do not know the answer based on any of the documentation or publications I have read so far. A very good article by Tom Lyons in the Sunday Independentof April 2012 dealing with all the circumstances surrounding the sale, the meeting with the shareholders and the related press briefing raised more questions than answers. Even when one reads that, the message from the Government is that it should be trusted and that we should be assured everything is fine. There is no detail on why everything was fine and why the deal was regarded as the best. In terms of compellability and documentation, the only way to get to the bottom of this is by a commission of investigation.

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