Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I think I met the person the Deputy mentioned on two occasions. We discussed the general state of the economy and how things were moving in the right direction. It was not for me to discuss any individual company's business.

In regard to the standards the Deputy mentioned in respect of the Department of Finance, he is aware that the Minister for Finance met his party's deputy leader and the other spokespersons or leaders of the parties yesterday to hear their proposals in so far as the commission of investigation is concerned. The issue here is that the Government was very anxious to get all of the information out into the public domain and into this House as quickly as possible. The structure to do that was to ask the special liquidator to collate all of the files and present them to the Minister for Finance by the end of August to be sent to the Committee of Public Accounts and that on its examination, if it requested a further independent investigation, that the law would be changed to allow the Comptroller and Auditor General's office to do it. That strategy was overtaken by the events of the past fortnight, in particular in respect of the case in the court and also because of the range of allegations and assertions that were made. I stress that nothing has been proven against anybody in terms of wrongdoing here. That is why we are having a two-day debate now on the terms of reference, which were approved by the Cabinet this morning and which were contributed to both by the Deputy's party and the other parties opposite, in order that this matter can be dealt with authoritatively and independently by a judge to be nominated as a sole member in charge of this commission of investigation. The Minister has been very flexible in the terms of reference, as the Deputy will be aware. He has even gone so far as to say that if issues were being dealt with or contracted by IBRC before the special liquidator was appointed, the flexibility is there to follow those particular transactions through and, also, that if other particular issues arise, consideration will be given to them.

While the Members will have the opportunity over the next two days to contribute to the debate, the intention is that the commission of investigation will be properly resourced and will deal with all of the issues that are set out between 21 January 2009 and 7 February 2013, the date that IBRC was liquidated. The Government looks forward to hearing the propositions from the various Deputies here over the next period and we should let the commission get under way and do its work. That is in the public interest and it is something the Government supports very strongly.

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