Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

One of the items of evidence at the banking inquiry was that when the Department of Finance did not like what John FitzGerald, chairman of the Economic and Social Research Institute, the director is now ex officio on the advisory council, wrote about the Irish economy it telephoned him to complain and John named him nervous Nellie. We asked the Minister, Deputy Michael Noonan, if he ever heard of nervous Nellie in his Department. That is how Departments see the quangos which they fund in the budgets and they will try to interfere. That is the track record and, again, that is a culture of public administration which the banking inquiry shows will have to be rooted out. If any of these bodies depends on a Department for its budget, there will be a person who will control it. In that context, the ventriloquists will not have left the scene.That is the reality we have had to face up to. The idea that these four people will be independent does not tally with what we found in the inquiry.

I do not wish to press the amendment. The dangers are there in the precedent set by the Department of Finance. The Department of Finance did not regard the ESRI as an independent organisation, but a body to complain to if it did not like what they were doing.