Joe O'Toole (Independent)

I am talking about the issue of the private family company. The issues raised by Senator Quinn are serious. Attempts have been made to do something in that regard but no doubt not enough from his point of view. Unfortunately, one of the reasons this arose is the various meetings between a family supermarket – certainly not Senator Quinn's – and a former Taoiseach. This was one of the issues. In submissions I received it was said we must include private companies for that reason. That is the reason there is a requirement to do so. It was a clear instruction from both Houses of the Oireachtas and the Committee of Public Accounts. When the Committee of Public Accounts looked at the report of the audit review group, it was just about satisfied with the part concerning this issue. It was not quite what it wanted as it wanted to raise the bar a lot more in the case of private companies.