Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 6 April 2017

Public Accounts Committee

2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Waterford Institute of Technology: Financial Statements 2013-2014

9:00 am

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

I reiterate all the comments on the delay in the annual accounts. I have no idea why accounts would be delayed. NUI Galway has distinguished itself by being one of two universities that is particularly late with its accounts. I would have thought the Department and the HEA would be straight on to it to ask what was going on.

I am reeling from all I have read on intellectual property rights in the past number of weeks. The witnesses can see all the paper we have. We are struggling. We are not accountants and we are struggling here looking at 3%, 5% and 8% of intellectual property rights being sold off to private companies. When I asked Dr. Love about that, he told me that Enterprise Ireland had a policy on it. Like my colleagues who are here today, it shocked me that Enterprise Ireland would set the policy for education. It truly shocked me. I am not sure what the HEA is doing. I do not wish to be personal but the HEA seems to be reacting rather than being proactive about intellectual property rights, which belong to the people.

What is happening to the whistleblowers is very unfair. We are talking about a small place. Whistleblowers are being identified here, albeit not by name. They are writing letters to members of this committee which are being referred onto the Chairman. We are now in a position where we are arguing about who said what, which is not our role. This is not a court of law but a place to bring accountability. Clearly, if whistleblowers are coming forward in such numbers, there is something seriously wrong with accountability. We then find ourselves acting as judge, which we do not want to be at all. Whistleblowers are asking to appear before this committee which is something we are going to have to consider.

Foundations are being set up and the universities seem to have washed their hands of them. The foundation accounts are not being consolidated. Clearly, the Comptroller and Auditor General has said that it is a matter of control and the universities do not have control. He is limited in that way. There is nothing wrong with the universities submitting the foundation accounts in an open and accountable manner to the Comptroller and Auditor General. NUI Galway, for example, only introduced a mechanism last year but is clapping itself on the back for setting up a formal procedure for processing payments. As someone with very varied experience, I am absolutely reeling.

I wish to turn to the professor from Waterford with regard to his opening statement, which captures it. We had the Quigley report and the comments from the HEA on that report dating back to 2013. I would have thought that the first sentence of his opening statement would have been that there were more than 40 recommendations and all of them have been implemented.

The issues of intellectual property rights and whistleblowers will have to be addressed. We are utterly dependent on whistleblowers with regard to every issue which is extraordinary, given that we have a third level oversight body.

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