Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy asked why we did not establish a commission of investigation. The interest of the Government here is for the taxpayer and that the facts in respect of the Siteserv sale should be made available as quickly as possible. The Deputy knows well enough that if a commission of investigation is set up to look at an issue like this there is a lead-in of a number of months and it can be a long time after that before a commission of investigation report is published. The Deputy would be the first out of the traps to say that the Government was involved in a cover up, did not want this information to be made available and was engaged in secrecy and all the rest of it.

In the interests of dealing with this matter, the Government decided to have the Minister use the authority he has to direct the special liquidator to look at all the issues and of sales of €10 million or in excess of €10 million and produce a report by the end of August. In addition, because all the files are in the possession of the special liquidator, it was decided to appoint a retired High Court judge to adjudicate on any case where there might be a perception of conflict of interest or whatever else.

The special liquidator has been asked to deal with all transactions that occurred between 21 January 2009, the date of nationalisation of IBRC, and 7 February 2013, which is the date of appointment of special liquidators to IBRC. Therefore it is broader than the Siteserv transaction that was concluded by IBRC back in 2012. It is expected that it will cover approximately 30 transactions that were concluded by the board of IBRC in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and up to the date of liquidation of IBRC in February 2013. It is a much broader investigation here.

That allows for the information relevant to these matters to be collated, produced and given to the Minister by the end of August. In the meantime a judge with the authority can adjudicate in any case where there is a perception of anything to do with a conflict of interest. That can then be transmitted here to the appropriate Oireachtas committees. As I have already said, if necessary the Government is quite prepared to legislate for a further independent analysis of this by the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General.

The only reason the board of IBRC was taking decisions that impacted on the taxpayer was the decision of the Government of which Deputy Martin was a member to guarantee the banks back in 2008 and nationalise Anglo Irish Bank in 2009, which caused absolute economic mayhem to hundreds of thousands of families in the country.

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