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

The response from Deputy Wallace is that he does not want to appear before the committee at this stage.

On the letter received from Mr. Jamie Bryson, the request to him was for written evidence. That is what was being referred to in light of what he had said. I, and I am sure other members, would like to know the content of what he might say. However, I understand that is not forthcoming and so we will leave that aside, deal with the other issues around this and move on.

The next item is correspondence receivedsince the meeting on Thursday, 8 October 2015. No. 3A is correspondence from Accounting Officers and-or Ministers. No. 3A.1 and 3A.2 are correspondence received from the Mr. Joe Hamill, Secretary General, Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht and Mr. Paul Quinn, Chief Procurement Officer, Office of Government Procurement, respectively, re air services to the Aran Islands. This is to be noted and published. I note that a one year contact has been signed and a new competition will be held. The correspondence does not outline why a new competition is necessary and also the cost of the service was to be capped at €920,000 but the one year’s extension will cost €1.6 million. The Department will have to deal with these two points.