Results 9,141-9,160 of 34,780 for speaker:Seán Fleming

Public Accounts Committee: 2013 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 7 - Office of the Minister for Finance
Chapter 1 - Exchequer Financial Outturn for 2013
Chapter 2 - Government Debt and Finance Accounts 2013 (14 May 2015)

Seán Fleming: I doubt if it was going to happen. How many weeks are we into this process? We have no details of the fee and we have not yet spoken to the people involved.

Public Accounts Committee: 2013 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 7 - Office of the Minister for Finance
Chapter 1 - Exchequer Financial Outturn for 2013
Chapter 2 - Government Debt and Finance Accounts 2013 (14 May 2015)

Seán Fleming: Why did the Department not appoint a judge who was in the country? We are not so short of retired judges. Is this matter not urgent? I will move on, but there will be more about this because in 2015 the Department of Finance is still appointing consultants without a tendering process and giving them a blank cheque to do a job. A couple of weeks into it they will ask for a scoping document...

Public Accounts Committee: 2013 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 7 - Office of the Minister for Finance
Chapter 1 - Exchequer Financial Outturn for 2013
Chapter 2 - Government Debt and Finance Accounts 2013 (14 May 2015)

Seán Fleming: My God, is all I can say.

Public Accounts Committee: 2013 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 7 - Office of the Minister for Finance
Chapter 1 - Exchequer Financial Outturn for 2013
Chapter 2 - Government Debt and Finance Accounts 2013 (14 May 2015)

Seán Fleming: Would it not have been prudent for the Department of Finance to have done a little bit of scoping before it announced this inquiry?

Public Accounts Committee: 2013 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 7 - Office of the Minister for Finance
Chapter 1 - Exchequer Financial Outturn for 2013
Chapter 2 - Government Debt and Finance Accounts 2013 (14 May 2015)

Seán Fleming: It announced this inquiry not knowing what was involved and not knowing what it will cost. We are here weeks later and we still do not know.

Public Accounts Committee: 2013 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 7 - Office of the Minister for Finance
Chapter 1 - Exchequer Financial Outturn for 2013
Chapter 2 - Government Debt and Finance Accounts 2013 (14 May 2015)

Seán Fleming: I will not get into what the Minister did. I will leave him out of it because he is not here. Did Mr. Moran not advise the Minister to take a few extra days? There was talk during the week it all happened. The Taoiseach wanted the Comptroller and Auditor General to do it and did not understand he could not do it. The next day in the Dáil the Tánaiste wanted an independent...

Public Accounts Committee: 2013 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 7 - Office of the Minister for Finance
Chapter 1 - Exchequer Financial Outturn for 2013
Chapter 2 - Government Debt and Finance Accounts 2013 (14 May 2015)

Seán Fleming: I know I will not have time to deal with all of the issues I want to discuss so I will spend the time I have left on this. Mr. Moran gave getting this job done expeditiously as the only reason for taking this route. Getting to the full truth and having it done independently should have ranked more seriously in his considerations than getting it done quickly.

Public Accounts Committee: 2013 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 7 - Office of the Minister for Finance
Chapter 1 - Exchequer Financial Outturn for 2013
Chapter 2 - Government Debt and Finance Accounts 2013 (14 May 2015)

Seán Fleming: Mr. Moran used the word "expeditious". It is in his statement.

Public Accounts Committee: 2013 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 7 - Office of the Minister for Finance
Chapter 1 - Exchequer Financial Outturn for 2013
Chapter 2 - Government Debt and Finance Accounts 2013 (14 May 2015)

Seán Fleming: However, it is not independent. We will move on and agree to disagree on the independence issue. I hate to say it but Mr. Moran's wording was very clever and accurate but nicely confusing to the public. He made it very clear a minute ago, and rightly so, technically correct but giving the wrong impression, that the cost of this would not have to come out of any voted expenditure. In his...

Public Accounts Committee: 2013 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 7 - Office of the Minister for Finance
Chapter 1 - Exchequer Financial Outturn for 2013
Chapter 2 - Government Debt and Finance Accounts 2013 (14 May 2015)

Seán Fleming: What were the dates of the revised frameworks for the other banks?

Public Accounts Committee: 2013 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 7 - Office of the Minister for Finance
Chapter 1 - Exchequer Financial Outturn for 2013
Chapter 2 - Government Debt and Finance Accounts 2013 (14 May 2015)

Seán Fleming: Which bank caused the longest delay? IBRC was not a bank at that stage. It was a separate case. While the other banks are continuing and, hopefully, prospering into the future, IBRC was not in that category. It should not have held it up because it was in an entirely different category from the other banks.

Public Accounts Committee: 2013 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 7 - Office of the Minister for Finance
Chapter 1 - Exchequer Financial Outturn for 2013
Chapter 2 - Government Debt and Finance Accounts 2013 (14 May 2015)

Seán Fleming: In February 2013, the legislation to appoint the special liquidator to IBRC was passed by the Dáil in a late night sitting. This is how things happen. It has been well reported that the legislation had been drafted several months beforehand. Although people think it was rushed legislation, it was not. It had been properly planned and drafted over a long period of time external to...

Public Accounts Committee: 2013 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 7 - Office of the Minister for Finance
Chapter 1 - Exchequer Financial Outturn for 2013
Chapter 2 - Government Debt and Finance Accounts 2013 (14 May 2015)

Seán Fleming: It was a temporary bridging loan from Bank of Ireland.

Public Accounts Committee: 2013 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 7 - Office of the Minister for Finance
Chapter 1 - Exchequer Financial Outturn for 2013
Chapter 2 - Government Debt and Finance Accounts 2013 (14 May 2015)

Seán Fleming: I have said that.

Public Accounts Committee: 2013 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 7 - Office of the Minister for Finance
Chapter 1 - Exchequer Financial Outturn for 2013
Chapter 2 - Government Debt and Finance Accounts 2013 (14 May 2015)

Seán Fleming: When was the special liquidator, Mr. Kieran Wallace of KPMG, brought into the discussion to be on standby?

Public Accounts Committee: 2013 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 7 - Office of the Minister for Finance
Chapter 1 - Exchequer Financial Outturn for 2013
Chapter 2 - Government Debt and Finance Accounts 2013 (14 May 2015)

Seán Fleming: Were fees discussed? I think it got €70 million so far.

Public Accounts Committee: 2013 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 7 - Office of the Minister for Finance
Chapter 1 - Exchequer Financial Outturn for 2013
Chapter 2 - Government Debt and Finance Accounts 2013 (14 May 2015)

Seán Fleming: I accept that and I agree with it.

Public Accounts Committee: 2013 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 7 - Office of the Minister for Finance
Chapter 1 - Exchequer Financial Outturn for 2013
Chapter 2 - Government Debt and Finance Accounts 2013 (14 May 2015)

Seán Fleming: The Department went to the big companies. That is fine.

Public Accounts Committee: 2013 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 7 - Office of the Minister for Finance
Chapter 1 - Exchequer Financial Outturn for 2013
Chapter 2 - Government Debt and Finance Accounts 2013 (14 May 2015)

Seán Fleming: From October 2012, it could have happened on any day in Dáil Éireann.

Public Accounts Committee: 2013 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 7 - Office of the Minister for Finance
Chapter 1 - Exchequer Financial Outturn for 2013
Chapter 2 - Government Debt and Finance Accounts 2013 (14 May 2015)

Seán Fleming: I apologise to any viewers for this technical discussion. Some people are lost. However, it is useful to put it on the public record that the liquidation issue was probably planned, discussed and thought out, and I have confidence in the process the Department followed. I have less confidence in what happened last month. I will let others in but will want to come back to talk about other...