Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 26 January 2017

Public Accounts Committee

2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 35 – Army Pensions
Vote 36 - Department of Defence
Chapter 8 – Disposal of the Government Jet

9:00 am

Photo of Catherine ConnollyCatherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will come back to it separately because I am under pressure to be somewhere else.

I have two final questions. One is the money given to the Red Cross for flood defence. Is there a breakdown of how much of it went to the Red Cross for administration expenses or did all that money go for flood victims?

My second specific question is on the spare parts. Mr. Quinn will forgive me for thinking that somebody had to be flying high - excuse the bad pun - with public money. On spare parts there has been a valuation of €1.4 million. Mr. Quinn mentioned three figures - €405,000 and then within a few months it is down to €53,000. I do not think he flippantly said it, but he said that a lot of them were second-hand. Actually almost half of the spare parts were not second-hand. Why was no analysis done of the spare parts to see which were not second-hand, which were new? There is a question about no certification for the parts. I will leave questions about the jet, as it has been asked by other people. On the spare parts, how can we go from a valuation of €1.4 million down to €410,000 and within a matter of months to €53,000 and a flippant comment that they are second-hand, when practically 50% are not?

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