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

We will deal with No. 1, the minutes of the meeting of 14 November 2013. Are the minutes agreed? Agreed. If there are no matters arising from the minutes, we will deal with correspondence.

No. 3 is correspondence received since our meeting on Thursday, 14 November 2013. No. 3A is correspondence from Accounting Officers and-or Ministers. The correspondence from the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform providing information requested on 13 October 2013 was published with the exception of point 11 relating to public private partnerships. This was deferred from our last meeting. At the last meeting, we agreed to look at the various minutes received up to now and at what the responses have been and maybe do a note for the members.

No. 3A.1 is correspondence dated 13 November 2013 from Mr. Martin Shanahan, chief executive officer of Forfás, in response to questions raised at our meeting on 17 October 2013, to be noted and published. This issue relates to the rent of office space which is vacant and it is a matter on which we will follow up in a forthcoming report. We will also take up this matter with the Office of Public Works because it is a scandalous waste of public funds, amounting to €1.4 million per year.

No. 3A.2 is correspondence dated 7 November 2013 from Dr. Olive Braiden, chair of the governor and guardians of the National Gallery of Ireland. It is a response to the invitation to attend the committee today and it is to be noted. In terms of how we will deal with this matter, I note the point made by Dr. Braiden that the issues relating to the payment to the director are for the gallery and the oversight Department and are not directly for the director who accepted the job. However, the committee can decide how it will approach this.