Noonan backs official in hotels row

Finance Minister Michael Noonan has expressed confidence in the secretary general of his department following controversy over correspondence he had with two British billionaires.

Mr Noonan said John Moran acted properly at all times in his dealings with the Barclay Brothers, who are locked in a legal battle with Irish developer Paddy McKillen over control of a group of London hotels.

He said Mr Moran is “a very innovative secretary general of the Department of Finance and he is doing an excellent job”.

Mr Noonan insisted Mr Moran “will continue, as far as I am concerned, to carry out the functions of secretary general of the Department of Finance”.

Mr McKillen has claimed an inappropriate level of contact was made between Richard Faber, on behalf of David and Frederick Barclay, and the Department of Finance in 2011 looking for assistance in acquiring Mr McKillen’s loans following the unsuccessful attempt to reach a deal with IBRC.

Mr Noonan defended the most senior civil servant in his department.

“We get a lot of correspondent every day. Hundreds of emails, hundreds of letters, and we try to deal with them in as courteous a way as possible.

“This particular piece of correspondence came in from investors who wanted to buy some assets which were being held by IBRC. John Moran read the correspondence, passed it down to the relevant officials to deal with it.

“The relevant officials looked at the correspondence and said ‘this is really a commercial matter, so what you should do is contact the relevant commercial people in IBRC’, so that was the role of the Department of Finance in it.”

He said this was done in “a very courteous way and the normal sign-off was used in the correspondence.”