Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

It had a preferential opportunity. The questionable decision to bundle loans raised eyebrows, and rightly so, given that it excluded many potential bidders and ensured that the proposed sale would only be available to a small, elite group of large investors. It can be legitimately argued that such bundling may have occurred because of the need to bring forward the asset sales in order to allow the Minister to provide a skewed picture of our finances to the ECB. We were told that there was no pressure from the ECB to bring the sales process forward. It is vital that the commission thoroughly examine such a possibility and set out the reasoning behind the decision to bundle the loans in such a way.

While I support the commission of investigation, limited and all as it is, it would be remiss of me not to highlight the fact that yet another commission of investigation into a matter of serious public concern is about to get under way. This seems to be our approach to dealing with problems and needs to be examined in its own right. Why can we not deal with issues in real time and, when designing systems, predict the kind of oversight that is required? The work of commissions excludes us from making freedom of information requests and exploring issues, which almost go into hiding for the length of time it takes the commissions to do their work. The Committee of Public Accounts has done some work that shortcut the work of the commission. I hope this means that we will have a speedy result and a report is before the House sooner rather than later.

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