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

Are the minutes of the meeting of 21 January agreed to? Agreed.

The next item is correspondence received since the meeting on 21 January. No. 3A is correspondence received from Accounting Officers and-or Ministers. No. 3A.1 is correspondence, dated 18 January 2016, received from Mr. Derek Moran, Secretary General, Department of Finance, as a follow-up to the meeting of the committee on 3 December 2015. The correspondence is to be noted and published.

No. 3A.2 is correspondence, dated 22 January 2016, received from Mr. Sean Ó Foghlú, Secretary General, Department of Education and Skills, as a follow-up to a meeting of the committee on 10 December 2015. The correspondence is to be noted and published.

No. 3A.3 is correspondence, dated 22 January 2016, received from Mr. Sean Ó Foghlú, Secretary General, Department of Education and Skills, regarding allegations of fraud in DIT, Aungier Street. The correspondence is to be noted and published.

No. 3A.4 is correspondence, dated 27 January 2016, received from Ms Claire Looney, social worker, Waterford Intellectual Disability Association, regarding an apology received from the HSE. The correspondence is to be noted and published. In respect of the letter from the Waterford Intellectual Disability Association, members will recall that at our last meeting we received a letter from the HSE stating it had been in contact and that officials had made an apology to those concerned. The letter from the Waterford Intellectual Disability Association was central to the issue. It states clearly that the HSE did not make contact and did not make any formal apology. That we received confirmation of this from the HSE almost by direct post last Thursday highlights the fact that there is either incompetence on the part of whoever is dealing with the matter in the HSE or there has been a deliberate attempt to mislead the committee.

In my view it is a mixture of both, and I am extremely disappointed that this is the case. I am bringing it to the attention of members. It has been discussed at length and last Thursday the committee thought some of the issues were at an end. It now appears that the HSE has not lived up to its commitment and has badly treated the organisation and the whistleblower. It has also treated this committee with some disrespect by not checking its facts before the written correspondence was submitted to the committee last week. I suggest that the committee bring the matter to the attention of Mr. Tony O'Brien at the HSE and include it in a file for the Taoiseach's attention.