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

Are the minutes agreed? Agreed. Are there any matters arising from the minutes? No. We will now deal with correspondence from Accounting Officers and Ministers. No. 3A.1 is correspondence dated 3 December from Mr. Tom Moran, Secretary General, Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, which is a follow-up to the committee's meeting on 16 October 2014, to be noted and published. I will ask the clerk to prepare a report to the Dáil on the evidence taken in respect of the fishery harbours.

No. 3A.2 is correspondence dated 1 December from Mr. Jim Breslin, Secretary General, Department of Health, which is a follow-up to our meeting on 23 October 2014, to be noted and published.

No. 3A.3 is correspondence dated 5 December from Mr. Noel Waters, acting Secretary General, Department of Justice and Equality, which is a follow-up to our meeting on 20 November 2014, to be noted and published. The committee at its meeting with the Courts Service had already agreed to make a number of recommendations on the ward of courts issue and we will proceed to draft a report on this.

No. 3A.4 is correspondence dated 5 December from the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Richard Bruton, regarding a follow-up from a meeting on 4 December 2014, to be noted and published. This issue relates to the dossier of information supplied to individual members and there is related correspondence on this from Arthur Cox. We had asked the Minister to refer the dossier to Revenue, but the position is that the Minister does not have this dossier. There has been a bit of a mix-up in terms of the information members received for their private papers and what was received by the Minister. This matter has been cleared up with the Minister and we have written back accordingly. There are legal impediments to him handing over the papers, or not having them in fact.

No. 3A.5 is correspondence dated 8 December from Arthur Cox solicitors in respect of a dossier regarding an Ansbacher account, to be noted. The position as outlined last week is that the dossier of information is not a committee document and therefore we cannot accede to the request from the solicitors acting for Mr. MacSharry. A draft letter, which is now on screen, will issue to Arthur Cox solicitors today. It is the same as the reply we agreed with regard to Mrs. Ann Lenihan. We do not have the papers and they are not committee papers. They are the personal papers of the individual members of the Dáil. Therefore it is not a matter for us. Other references in the correspondence have to do with a Member raising the names in the House. This is a matter for the Ceann Comhairle and the Member and not for us.

We need to be a bit clearer on what happened afterwards, perhaps a paragraph of explanation of the committee's role in the matter.