Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We have just received it and I have not yet looked at it.

We will now deal with our work programme. Today the committee is dealing with the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport. Next Thursday, 2 March, it will be the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government. We will be dealing with the central fund of local authorities, as well as progress on land aggregation and the departmental Vote.

On Thursday, 9 March it will be the HSE, dealing with patients' private property accounts, financial statements on the fair deal scheme and the health repayments scheme donations fund. Those are three specific topics for the HSE, so it will not be a general HSE discussion.

On Thursday, 23 March we will have the Department of Education and Skills. Can we start by agreeing some suggested dates for the third level colleges? We do not want it to take too many weeks. It is now in front of us on the screen. These are possibilities that are all subject to confirmation. I want members to have an indication of where we are going but the dates may change. They are possibilities for people to work on, however.

On 30 March we will examine the University of Limerick, University College Cork and NUI Galway. We will have to bring in each group separately, but it is a matter for us to decide. We will have a limited time for each group. If we did them one or two at a time it would take us from here to the summer recess. We want to cover them all, so we might restrict the number of questioners. Some members might ask questions of the first institution, while three or four might ask the next one. We will work that out, but if all 13 of us ask questions of every institution that comes in we will be here forever. We might therefore plan our own progress and timetable.

The plan is to try to do three institutions, but they will be long days if we are having three. There will be breaks at the end of each session, but if we did them any slower we would be here for far too long. There are other items to get on to. That is a possibility for 30 March.

On the 6 April, we will examine Waterford Institute of Technology, Dublin Institute of Technology, Dundalk Institute of Technology and the Higher Education Authority. Can they come any earlier or is that the suggested date?