Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will return to that matter. The National Development Finance Agency will be on the agenda of today's meeting because it is part of the National Treasury Management Agency.

The next item is a briefing note on procurement in the HSE. When we meet representatives of the HSE to discuss its annual report we should refer to the sample showing the proportion of HSE procurement that did not go through a tendering process. We cannot ignore the fact that the HSE has difficulty managing internal procurement, not to speak of section 38 and 39 organisations. We will note that.

The final note is on the Inland Fisheries Ireland rates. Having read the document a second time, I am even more shocked by its contents. I refer to Annex D, information note for Public Accounts Committee, Inland Fishery Rates. We spotted in Inland Fisheries Ireland's annual accounts a substantial write-off of the commercial rates levied by the organisation. The note states:

The IFI accounts for the years 2011-2014 (and previously for the individual Fisheries Boards) included debtors and bad debt provisions in relation to fishery rates. The most recently published accounts (for 2014) disclose trade debtors of €1.1 million and bad debt provisions of €0.88 million [This is almost 90% of the bad debt provisions].The bulk of these figures relates to fishery rates.

It appears Inland Fisheries Ireland collects only about 20% of the rates it levies every year, which is not acceptable. I am placing this information in the public domain.

We will write directly to IFI for a detailed explanation of what the problem is. They mentioned collection difficulties. Maybe they do not bother collecting. I do not know. It is incumbent on us to write to IFI directly.