Clerk to the Committee:

Next Wednesday, we have agreed to meet Mr. Bradshaw, the former chairman. We wrote to him and he wrote back expressing a willingness to attend and help the committee. The other key witnesses we wrote to were Mr. Maloney, whose letter says he welcomes the opportunity. He is out of Ireland but I will arrange a suitable date in early September. He is the other key player in respect of the DDDA. The wider group is the board. We have a letter from Mr. FitzPatrick's solicitors, which members can now see. The letter points out that the solicitors have been instructed the client is willing, and would welcome the opportunity, to attend our hearings but he believes he is currently before the courts on foot of two separate criminal investigations and where his attendance in any such hearing may be widely reported in the media the solicitors do not believe it is advisable for him to attend. Therefore, he declined the invitation.

We will meet Mr. Bradshaw next week and we will get Mr. Maloney, who was the CEO and central to the issues covered in the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General, to attend. We will schedule a short meeting with the other members of the executive board. We have already met Ms Moylan. One or two of the board members have phoned me to say they have no difficulties coming in. After that, Professor Niamh Brennan has expressed a wish, which the committee agreed to at the last meeting, to wait until we have taken all the evidence before she presents evidence of what she found when she went into the DDDA in 2009. That is where we are at the moment. It is a rolling ball.