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

The first matter on the agenda is the minutes of the meeting of 3 October 2013. Are the minutes agreed? Agreed. Two issues arise from the minutes. A committee delegation will visit Ethiopia at the end of November. Full details of the programme and the cost of sending the delegation will be published. The details, which are being finalised by Irish Aid in consultation with the committee, will be published on the website as soon as they become available.

The second issue relates to our discussion in private session last week about making submissions relating to our forthcoming examination of chapter 7 of the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General which deals with the penalty points system. At last week's meeting, we discussed the implications of taking such submissions and the need to ensure any submissions relate solely to the issues in the report. In that regard, the committee agreed that such submissions would be sent directly to the parliamentary legal adviser as the committee has discretion to return the documents. Having forwarded such submissions, they would subsequently be the subject of parliamentary privilege. I have been given documentation on penalty points which I will hand over to our legal adviser. We will await her advice as to what we should do with these documents. This approach is in accordance with the agreement reached by the committee last week.

We have received correspondence since the meeting of Thursday, 3 October 2013 from Accounting Officers and Ministers. No. 3A.1 is correspondence dated 27 June 2013 from Mr. Matthew Elderfield, deputy Governor, financial regulation, Central Bank of Ireland, in which he provides additional information requested by the committee at its meeting of 13 June 2013.