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

No. 3C is documents for today’s meeting and comprises Nos. 3C.1 and 3C.2. They are to be noted and published.

No. 4 is reports, statements and accounts received since the meeting of 30 April. All four documents have a clear audit opinion and are to be noted and published.

The work programme is on screen. The next meeting will be with officials of the Office of the Minister for Finance to discuss the outturn for 2013, the issue of Government debt and the financial accounts for 2013.

This morning in the Dáil the Minister for Finance indicated that there would be some form of investigation into SiteServ and referred to the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform and the Committee of Public Accounts. My understanding is the deal in question was very much commercial in nature.

At the last meeting, we, as a committee, decided we would ask for the papers relative to the decision-making process leading up to this. If we could have those for that meeting, then we can rightly deal with whatever queries that might arise in respect of the lead-up to this sale and the involvement of the Department officials. We could also seek clarification from them as to what their concerns were at the time about Siteserv and the other commercial deals that were done. Apparently, they were speaking about not only Siteserv but the other businesses that were sold.

We did ask for those papers.