Cianan Brennan: PAC stands solid in the eye of the storm

After a shaky start, the Public Accounts Committee has flexed its muscles a number of times this year, writes Cianan Brennan

Sinn Féin's Brian Stanley has fared well as chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, despite posting a controversial tweet suggesting that Great Britain was a nation of “slow learners” when it came to dealing with the IRA.

The 33rd incarnation of the Public Accounts Committee got off to something of an inauspicious start in September of 2020.

Already delayed for seven months after the election in February by a combination of drawn-out Government formation talks and Covid-19, the new PAC, Dail Eireann’s only standing committee, hit the ground running with a will to perform, only to be stymied by a former incarnation and some ill-advised pronouncements on the part of its new chair.