Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I met on 4 October last year with the party leaders. We agreed in principle that the Government will establish a commission of investigation under the Act of 2004 to investigate any significant matters of public concern in regard to NAMA. The party leaders also agreed then that there will be limitations on the commission's work, given the location of potential witnesses, documentation outside the jurisdiction and ongoing criminal investigations. Since then, the Committee of Public Accounts, which is not an alternative to a commission of investigation, has been holding hearings in regard to the Comptroller and Auditor General's report. It received a very large amount of evidence from NAMA and many interested parties, including parties from outside this jurisdiction. We await the report of the PAC.

After the PAC report is published, we will see what it says, and the Deputy will know more about that than I do, given she is a member of the committee. We will need to consider any findings, conclusions or recommendations that may be made by the committee. For example, the PAC report may contain information that would need to be factored into the terms of reference that would be proposed for the commission. As I said, we will also need to consider whether the commission of investigation would be able to find out other information beyond what has been considered by the PAC report. If information or personnel are outside the jurisdiction, or if there are criminal investigations, that puts limitations on what a commission of investigation might be able to do.

That is not resiling from the decision in principle to have a commission of investigation into this matter. It is being realistic in the sense of what will be in the PAC report, what are the matters it has considered, what are the recommendations, whether all work would be replicated by a commission of investigation and where are the areas that neither the PAC nor a commission of investigation has been able to go into because of the limitations of jurisdiction, documentation or whatever. That is where the matter stands.

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