John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Vice Chairman and members of the committee for agreeing to set aside the time this morning from the busy schedule of the Committee of Public Accounts for me to make this brief statement and answer any questions they might have about the matters that have come into the public domain between the end of April and now. We have dealt with some of these issues but I am quite prepared to deal with them and the new issues that have emerged. In doing so, and in agreeing to allot the time this morning to allow this to happen, I am conscious of the importance of the work of the Committee of Public Accounts and its members. I am also conscious of the importance of the committee itself in relation to the House. I believe it to be the most important committee in this House and it has carried out its work down through the years without fear or favour and in a non-political way. During my time on the committee from 2002 to 2007 I experienced the challenges that can present to a member of government. I had to get over those challenges and work with the other members as they did the important work of scrutinising spending for the State. I admire the work of the current committee in carrying on that tradition. It is true to say that since 21 April there has been a certain distraction from that work because of public comment or public media reports about the position that I held in 2007 for a brief period of 18 months as Minister of State at the then Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, with responsibility for trade and commerce.

The first issue that arose in respect of that appointment was the provision of an office. I believe the Accounting Officer dealt fully and adequately with that in the past few weeks. I quoted at the end of that meeting from the freedom of information request I had put in to the Office of Public Works, OPW, the reply to which stated clearly that it was senior officials within the office of the OPW who scrutinised this work, provided the plans, carried out the tendering process and delivered the finished office. The Accounting Officer and that written reply to my FOI request clearly demonstrated, in my opinion, that I had no hand, act or part in the decision-making about the materials used in that office, its size or its extent. I am quite prepared to answer any other questions that might have emerged for members since then.

There were other reports after that which came into the public domain. I apologise to members of the committee because I know that Deputy Harris asked publicly why members were not informed or why I had not informed members of what the FOI request was about and the response to it. I will start with 21 April, or sometime around then, and what happened afterwards. I did not receive from the Department any copies of that FOI request by way of that process. I had to go to the Fianna Fáil research office to ask if it could get a copy. I was not quite sure of the procedure but I did not have copies. That is why no one was informed. I tried to respond as best I could to those articles by casting my mind back six years by way of preparing myself and so on. It was hard to do that when, day after day, something different and significant appeared without my knowledge and without my having the paperwork to back it up.

Last Friday - this relates to current events - I received a telephone call from the Department to say that certain information was being given in response to an FOI request. That was on 7 June at 5.34 p.m. That is when I received the e-mail. I studied that e-mail and its contents on Saturday and I spent all of Sunday trying to respond directly to the reporter concerned by e-mail. Sometime late on Sunday night, I think, I finished providing information in response to the queries addressed to me. I regret that I did not have the opportunity to forward the information to Deputy Harris and the other members of the committee, but I did not have it until that late hour. At that stage the articles were ready for publication and the information was put into the public domain. It consisted largely of what was known about the office and about toilet rolls, and then it touched on some other subjects, including the fact that I had employed my son when I entered the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, as it was known then. That was in 2007. In the course of 2008 a key member of our staff went on maternity leave and we had staffing issues during most of my time in that office. In order to compensate for the work that was required to be done, overtime was claimed. It was claimed in the normal way according to the standards of the Civil Service. It was not signed off by me, as was suggested in different places. I did not have anything to do with that process. It is true that in hindsight I could have managed things better in terms of staff, and I accept that, but I ask members to understand that during that time I ran a busy constituency office on one side, and when one is appointed a Minister - I hope some members will enjoy that some day - one's constituency office workload doubles or trebles. I took on the Department role as well and I expected my staff at local and national level to be able to respond to the massive number of queries that we received from organisations and individual business people who were facing difficulties in doing business abroad and at home. All of us in that office dealt as best we could with all of those issues. As I said, the overtime was appropriately and properly claimed. My regret now, looking back, is that maybe we could have organised things better, but all of this was within the guidelines that were set down.