Trevor Ó Clochartaigh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Yes. The Minister's officials would have been well aware of people's concerns about the issues regarding the cohesion process at the time.

I am surprised the Minister is calling these companies private companies because they are not. They are companies limited by guarantee and under guidelines that were negotiated over three or four years, as far as I remember, by officials in the Minister's Department. Strict criteria were laid down on how these companies had to be constituted, the number of board members, which sectors they had to come from, etc. For the Minister to say that many of the directors of these companies were unaware of their responsibilities surprises me. I know that numerous consultations took place at the time about the responsibilities of the directors. It is unfair to many of the good people who have been directors of those companies and who have been running many of those companies well, to be casting aspersions on them by saying they are private companies and they did not live up to their responsibilities.