Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity of speaking to this motion. I had hoped the debate would be on the NAMA report, but the Minister feels it is all about him. It was not about him at all. It was about NAMA. There are 101 pages in the report and only two paragraphs about the Minister, but he thinks it is all about him.

The litany of information the Minister made available was not relevant to the Committee of Public Accounts. He spoke about documents released on 3 November 2015 which were sent to a journalist. They were not released to us. He spoke about information sent to the Comptroller and Auditor General. The committee does not have access to the Minister's private papers and he knows that. The Minister mentioned he replied to parliamentary questions in 2015. I will remind him that the majority of members of the Committee of Public Accounts who examined this matter were not Members of this House in 2015. Eleven of the 13 members of the committee were not members of the committee when he made the statement and released the freedom of information request to a particular journalist.

The Minister was invited like every other witness to attend the committee. Many of them came from further distances and voluntarily. We gave the Minister no credit for coming voluntarily because he knows we could have compelled him had we chosen to do so. We expected people to be open and upfront at the committee. We asked the Minister for his assistance. He was aware of that meeting with Cerberus, but the members of the committee were not. He had five hours to be helpful to the committee but he chose not to be helpful. He was the one who held information back. He complained the committee did not ask him about something about which we knew nothing. He was the one in possession of the information. It is a little bit rich of the Minister to complain that we did not ask him about something when he was the only person in the room who knew about that meeting on that particular occasion.

On my comment which he has taken exception to, I will repeat it again. We modified the report to say that it was not procedurally incorrect. The Minister has misled the Dáil tonight by claiming that we said the Minister acted inappropriately. We never said that in the report. The report stated it was procedurally incorrect. That means that the procedure that allowed those meetings was inappropriate. We never said the Minister was inappropriate. I do not know why he reacted in the way he did. Had the Minister taken the actual time to read the report, he would know we did not use the words he apportioned today in that regard.

We were more than fair to the Minister. He was not fair to the committee by sitting for five hours in possession of information when he knew, as the line Minister, that we were investigating the sale of Project Eagle. He had information about a meeting between himself and the chairman of Cerberus on the day before the close of bids and the chairman was subsequently meeting the NAMA senior executives after he met the Minister. The Minister was the only one in possession of that information. He was the one who was unfair to the Committee of Public Accounts, not the other way around. We were more than fair to the Minister. The Minister wrote to the committee expressing his views on the committee’s draft report. The committee included the full text of his three-page letter in our report to give absolute balance. We gave the full version of his view on the matter. We were utterly fair to the Minister.

The Minister sent that letter to the committee on 15 February 2017. I went into the Oireachtas restaurant that evening and the Minister asked me to come over to have a chat with him. He told me that I was unfair to him by not inviting him to the committee. I told him he was unfair to the committee by keeping the information for five hours. He concluded the conversation by saying that he can injunct me. Shame on the Minister for Finance for wanting to injunct the Committee of Public Accounts for doing its job. I wrote it down. He said to me, “I can injunct you”. For a Minister for Finance to threaten the Committee of Public Accounts is the most inappropriate thing any Minister for Finance has done in my lifetime.

The Minister should withdraw that threat here now and apologise to the Committee of Public Accounts. I would go so far as to question the Minister’s fitness for office when he threatens the Chair and the 13 members of the Committee of Public Accounts with injuncting them for doing their job. The Minister came in here tonight with more of the same bluster trying to threaten the Committee of Public Accounts. We will be here long after he is gone.

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