Shane Cassells (Meath West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Acting Chairman. I express my thanks to the Chairman, Deputy Sean Fleming, for his stewardship of the Committee of Public Accounts and for the report. I also thank fellow committee members and all the staff. As a new Deputy, it was an intriguing report to work on and the financial and political intrigue that evolved as the process went on showed how many players were involved. I think also of the late Martin McGuinness who accepted an invitation to come before the committee, unlike some from the Unionist community who chose to not come and give evidence.

As we neared the completion of the report, we moved from a discussion about the substantive issues into political issues, involving some, but not all, members. This was fuelled even further by some who chose to leak our working document to journalists. More amazingly, the Minister for Finance then responded to the leaked documents. The launch of the report, and the discussion here tonight, has been overshadowed by some Members' jibes such as that the report is revisionist or a last ditch effort. This is not helpful. Perhaps that was par for the course at the launch, but what has happened here tonight is disgraceful. I agree with Deputy Mick Wallace that the Minister was moving the focus. It was a smoke and mirrors job here by the Minister tonight.

It is worth remembering that the Fine Gael members of the committee, as part of their deliberations on the working document, were prepared to use the words "not advisable" regarding the Minister. Let us blow this away. Fine Gael committee members were prepared to say that it was not advisable for the Minister to have been at that meeting. That is the bottom line. It is being thrown back into the fire again and it is amazing to hear such comments from the members. A seasoned Minister came into the Chamber tonight and spoke for 15 minutes. He has a cheek to attack the Chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts and to defend NAMA. It was unbelievable. NAMA did not need defending. It did plenty of that itself when the NAMA representatives came to the committee. They used a scorched earth policy of attacking the committee in newspaper articles before they ever got near the committee room in the first place.

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